Just drop it, John – trilogy
by csfcsf
Summary: Yet another collection of micro and short stories, one recurring line of dialogue. Apparently John hears this a lot from Sherlock: "Just drop it". Different genres, varying lengths. (At times I still get bored, who'd figure.)
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: I decided to try again. I called it the trilogy (see "Just drop it, John" and "Just drop it, John – sequel") because it was the word that kept coming to mind, along with "how did I get here?"_

_General disclaimer: I don't own these characters, and make no profit nor fame out of these stories._

_Personal disclaimer: Still not British (English is not my first language), a writer (no training), or anything but myself._

* * *

_**.**_

_No, no, no, no..._

_My heart is beating loudly in my chest. Or it could be the blood rushing inside my veins, or my hurried steps harshly thumping on the pavement. I'm here one instant and three meters ahead in the next; still not enough. Never enough. Sherlock._

The criminal caught in _flagrante delicto_ has knocked my mate off the tourist sightseeing boat into the river, but not before Sherlock disarmed him, assuring every passenger's safety. The hero's recompense was to be swiftly shoved overboard. No life jacket. Onto the chilled muddy waters of the Thames.

I'm running. As hard as I can make my legs go and faster still. To the centre of the bridge. Sherlock is powerless, drifting in the current below, but luckily he seems conscient, coherent, with some fight left in him.

Finally I arrive, nesting those yards of thick rope on the corroded metal rail, that damned rope I nicked from somewhere on the margin. I don't care who I stole it from. I'll make amends later.

'Sherlock!' I yell. I need him to understand my sidekick plan, to read my mind, to fight the icy tendrils of fate grasping and tearing his beautiful mind to leave nothing but empty death in their wake. 'Sherlock!' I yell again. And again. I'm not sure I ever stop. In those dark swirping waters, eventually he glances up. Slow. Numbed. Probably hypothermic by now.

His lips form the familiar words much before their sound reaches me in strained rags.

'Just drop it, John!'

I do. I drop the damned rope, trying to aim it close that he can grasp it as he floats past under the bridge, but not to hit him (for the impact of a thick rope thrown from that height can not be downplayed, it'd sink my friend, possibly permanently).

Sherlock grabs the literal lifeline. Unfortunately, with subpar thinking born out of cold and panic he doesn't go for the end, he greedily goes for whichever part of fibrous material comes near him. He holds on dearly and that strains the rope at once.

Up on the bridge – ignoring the cars stopping and the people coming over to gape, to ask what's going on, to take ruddy videos with their phones – the pull is so strong, I won't let go, and I get slammed against the metal guard. I allow only a strangled grunt, as I steady myself.

Immediately I think of Sherlock's beloved long wool coat, soaking up half the Thames, and cold that is paralysing the genius' vital organs.

I look about desperately, searching for a solution.

'You, in the pink sweater, grab the end of the rope and tie it around the railing! You, with the job in the city, I don't care what's your name, just come grab the rope! The same goes for you coming out of the rental car, and the cab driver. There's a man on the other end, and we're saving him right – ruddy – now! You too, lady! One, two, hoist! Great job, again!...'

_**.**_

'John, you commandeered an army of ordinary citizens to raise me from the river and bring me to you.'

I shush him patiently. 'Take your tea, Sherlock. It will sooth your scratchy throat. I'm not liking the hoarse sound of your voice. I think you overstayed in the Thames.'

He smirks; that one rare smirk that tells me he knows I'm deflecting but, for once, he'll allow.

He snuggles tighter in the afghan blanket, in his chair by the lit fireplace. Wet curls plastering his forehead, now dripping lukewarm water from an earlier hot shower. All vitals are normal, all signs pointing to recovery.

For a split second I muse on how close I was to having lost him. At once I try to shrug the haunting thought away and I bend down to smarten the bright burning wood.

'Nothing happened, John', he insists in reading my mind as soon as I turn my attention to a simple attainable task. As if he too didn't want me to see him at this vulnerable, personal moment. 'Nothing happened because I've got you.'

I chuckle at that. The hot coals spark flames that dance at the sound of my chuckles.

'And you've got me', he adds in a childlike logic of justice and equality. But I like that. The simple truths, the quiet company tonight.

We've got each other, that's what makes us do great things. It's who we are.

_**.**_


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I might still come back and take this away._

_I don't insert Rosie more in my stories because I so often have to "send her to her room upstairs" (that's code for a superfluous character going away to be forgotten, in tv shows), or have John end up the poster boy for a neglectful father._

_I guess this is sort of a spin-off from that last one in the Sequel._

* * *

_**1of2.**_

_**Monday.**_

'"_My chair!" _The Pappa Bear cries out._ "Someone has been sitting in my chair!"'_

For some mysteriously endearing reason my little elf child knows for herself alone, Rosie giggles at the well known bedtime story. It could be the different voices I make or the over-exaggerated acting, but you can't really read a bedtime story as if it were a pharmaceutical catalogue, can you?

Well, maybe you can, and maybe the child would fall asleep a lot faster, but it turns out I'm a writer of sorts. A blogger. A hyperbolic romantic butchering the English language, some would shrewdly say when their _E. coli_ cultures are confiscated.

'More, daddy, more!' Rosie demands. When my daughter is not sleepy, I tend to turn back the book page instead of forward, and add a few shock discoveries from the Bear family to clues of Goldilocks' breaking and entry felony.

'"_Footprints! There are small feet prints on the floor of our wonderful home!" _Little Bear spots at once.'

Rosie shakes her head, too knowledgeable. Sometimes I suspect Sherlock has been indoctrinating my child in the petty, non-violent crimes detection. I can't otherwise explain how Rosie exposed another toddler for trying to smuggle home the class pet, a bright orange goldfish. Apparently the orange goldfish was destined to be fed to the boy's cat. Rosie insists she saved the goldfish by exposing the boy. Sherlock seemed surprised by the whole tale I shared, yet as I turned around I think I still saw the two sharing a secret handshake.

'"_My mug, someone has drunk tea from my mug!" _Papa Bear protests. _"Someone should have washed the mug after themselves!"'_

Rosie giggles harder than ever. 'Twas Uncle Sherlock!' she cries in delight. The little snitch is probably knowledgeable of some random appropriation of my RAMC mug. I'm better off not asking.

Since we moved to Baker Street – a return for me and a new home for Rosie – she's been getting on so well with the gang. They are the extended family I don't have, or the one we'll never know if her mother had forsaken. Now I didn't introduce Sherlock as an uncle. Someone at nursery must have asked for clarification, because my girl came back home insisting Sherlock was her uncle. I smiled apologetically to the detective, only to find him all solemn at the time. "It'd be my honour", he told my child, who understood nothing of the sudden gravitas. As for me, I felt a huge weight lift from my chest. I always knew the two got on so well, but this was proof that Rosie is Sherlock's favourite in her own right. No longer just because she's John Watson's child.

I brush her blonde curls, so soft. Even Rosie's room, one of Mrs Hudson's spare rooms thrown in for no extra rent because it's just next to mine. They would have me believe the room just happened to be pink and perfect all the while it had been just an extra empty room. Rosie just loved it the moment she first came in.

'"_My book, someone has—'_

Soft knocks on the bedroom door interrupt our story in an almost timid way. We both turn to look at the uncharacteristically shy detective, looking uncomfortable jumping in on our family moment.

Well, Rosie and I won't have that!

'"_Look, it's Uncle Bear! Has anyone touched your magnifying glass, by any chance?'"_

Sherlock blinks, utterly at a loss for a couple of seconds. He then comes closer, snatches the book of my hands, and with a deeply concentrated wrinkle in his forehead he scans the through the scarce pages of a four year old's book. He then hands the book back, mechanically, still lost in a fairy tale with talking animals and lost children. And finally:

'"_Ze Vather Bear iz not miztaken, I believe I am Uncle Bear, little child..."'_

I chuckle. 'Uncle Bear is French with an appalling accent?'

'Or a speech impairment, ever thought of that?' he snaps back in mock self-righteousness.

'Fine. Rosie, Uncle Bear is French, he's here visiting the country.'

Rosie giggles again. I ask naturally: 'What is it?'

'Papa Bear is silly, it wasn't Goldilocks!'

'Hmm?'

'Goldilocks is not a robber.'

'Oh?' My daughter knows what a robber is. Will the nursery contact social services? Surely not if they write children's books like _Goldilocks_.

'But she sat on the chairs, ate the porridge and—'

'It was Uncle Bear who took the mug, we needed to save the goldfish's life!'

'What?'

Sherlock cuts in hastily, turning off the bedside lamp. 'Just drop it, John! We should let Rosie sleep! Research shows cognitive impairment can set back a sleep deprived child when—'

Rosie's giggles cut the darkness with a dreadfully wise reverberation.

I squint at the great detective. He looks exceedingly guilty under the filtered moonlight from the window.

Sherlock sighs.

'We'll return the goldfish in the morning and apologise, John. We weren't the only ones trying to bring him home, remember?'

_Seriously, how many toddlers do I have?_

_**.**_

_**Wednesday.**_

'Dad is alright, darling. Just a bit... wet.'

The little girl playing on the living room's rug, pouring tea for the skull and the doll, is still looking up in surprise. Sherlock tenses behind me, I sense. In the back of my mind the pieces tweak. Sherlock fears I may back down on my decision to mingle together my family and 221B's work.

At times like this, I do wonder if I'm being neglectful by daring off home, leaving Rosie in Mrs Hudson's care, to go hunt a murderer – that turned out being just a jealous ex-girlfriend that had faked her own death on social media, so now we had no murder and no murderer, and whom, when confronted, angrily pushed me into a swimming pool.

Sherlock grabbed and cuffed the criminal just as the police was arriving. Lestrade was amused. He wanted every single detail. I insisted I wanted to return to Baker Street at once. He only took pity when I started shivering and sneezing.

All the way back, as Greg Lestrade insisted on giving us a ride (statements left for tomorrow), I was feeling incredibly guilty I had bolted off after Sherlock. I should have been home – dry – with my child. She must be asking herself why have I gone out and when am I coming back.

Now we got here, I'm dripping water on the floor, snuggled in Sherlock's borrowed wool coat, and I see Rosie didn't miss me.

She smiles, her mother's clever smile, and confides to her doll:

'Daddy is silly. Clothes off before the bathtub.'

I chuckle amused. All tension gone, I feel the chuckles rattle my shoulders.

Behind me, Sherlock huffs.

'Clearly a pool', he corrects. 'The smell of chlorine is overwhelming.' And he walks out in a strop.

Is he jealous of my attention?

_Upon my word, it's like having two toddlers at once..._

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Okay, people. Before I get any more "marriage proposals" (using an euphemism here, because I found a PM disturbing), and in case you haven't figured out from my profile, I am a woman. I, the one writing the A/Ns, the ghost writer behind this particular incarnation of John Watson._

_And if you want to get an intimate knowledge of John, so you can dream of him instead – he's a man; he's got a shoulder scar, back to front, from a sniper's bullet in Afghanistan; he's nicely buffed (not too much) under those jumpers; and he makes a mean cuppa. If that's what someone was looking for, I advise browsing a dating website._

_That's not enough, though, is it? To describe a character (or a person for that matter)? There's also how he thinks, and acts, and faces adversities. We know about that. How he can doubt himself when he's got what it takes and we know it. How he licks his lips when he's anxious or sniffs as a statement. How his eyes shine when Sherlock makes a clever deduction, because Sherlock can be brilliant, because in the bigger picture Sherlock can make sense of a world that has mistreated John by using him and discarding him and now giving him importance again, just like that, without apparent reason or rhyme. How John makes mistakes like the rest of us, and needs to face up like the rest of us. How his shoulder throbs on rainy days and he smiles as he finds Sherlock has the fire going in the fireplace under some silly reason like roasting marshmallows at three in the morning, but that's alright because John could use the company right now so he takes a stack of poked marshmallows and takes his seat next to Sherlock, allowing the warmth to seep in every pore and heal him from within. There's companionable silence and there's deep conversation. Not everything is expressed in words, not even the ones in our stories... If this is what someone was looking for, welcome to fanfiction. And may our lives measure up to our insane expectations. -csf_

* * *

_**2of2.**_

_**Friday.**_

'Shush... Rosie is finally asleep. The fever is not as high, the medicine kicked in.' A tired dry chuckle rustles my frame; a parent doctor is but an oxymoron, where he knows the common child malady and its treatment and time frame, but refuses to accept how powerless he actually is to hurry it along, how he can't keep it away and he's humbly brought down from his medicine pedestal. For a greater portion of the night, nothing I've done seemed to pacify my little one.

Standing as if he was intruding somehow, Sherlock stares at me, biting his lip. He wants to tell me something, but finds the moment to be all wrong. He glances around the cluttered room, where neither of us ever envisioned a kindergarten; or a paediatric medical unit as it resembles today in all but the serious equipment. Thermometers (more than one, you can never find the one), blankets, water cups, stethoscope (I overreacted, okay?), medicine bottles and spoons, discarded toys.

I'm sitting in my chair, where I collapsed half exhausted, after a couple of hours walking concentric circles in the living room, carrying Rosie, trying to sooth her as the fever persisted. It's finally breaking after a long night. I look down on her blond curls. She's too small for such an aggressive illness, I'd swear. She braves on with a tenacity of life that is in itself a lesson to the cynics of the world. She is the pure strength of the innocent, as she grasps my shirt with a tiny, bothered, fist; refusing to let go. I've been humming a tune ever since she started settling down. I haven't stopped just because Sherlock came over for whatever object he can't find, deduction he can't complete, or food he can't cook on his own.

'John, you look shattered.' _That's much too honest; but I find his honesty refreshing._

'Yes', I admit, 'well, parenthood isn't easy.'

'And you are a single parent', he points out.

'Yes, I guess I am.' _Is this conversation pointless or what?_

Sherlock comes closer to check the skull on the mantle. His fingers touch the calcified bone mechanically, tracing the occipital outline.

'John, I have not been fed in two days, three hours.'

The information startles me more than it should.

'Order some takeaway. Honestly, Sherlock, you're regressing! You used to be able to order takeaway. How did you survive before I came along?'

He shrugs it off easily. 'I've been solving a case and you didn't care. You know I'm all absorbed when solving a case. I depend on you to keep an eye out for my well-being. Is it too much to ask?'

I don't know what my face tells him when, I suspect, he studies me in the mirror, but it's not what he seemed to be expecting. I try to define my feelings, confused by his reaction. Was he trying to incense me? He made me feel guilty, overwhelmed, and a basic failure. If he sought fight and action in his protective soldier flatmate, he didn't get very far.

The detective squats by my side all of a sudden, dropping with fluid elegance.

'You were meant to tell me off, by the way. Here, let me help', he reaches forward gently.

I grab onto Rosie tighter as a reflex. But that's hardly fair, Sherlock is the best godfather. I just need to protect Rosie from the world, right now. She's been through a rough patch.

'She's just fallen asleep, mate.'

This time Sherlock seems to find what he seeks in my face. He picks up his phone, taps on it at lightning speed and stores it away in his pocket.

'I trust Chinese will do for you too?' he offers dismissively before reaching out to his violin case.

_He's thinking of playing? Now? Does he intend to wake up Rosie? Mate, it took me hours to get her to sleep!_

I'm about to protest when his deep voice murmurs in the quiet of 221B:

'Genetics, John. Nature's art of resemblances and traits that identify us as branches in the same family tree. Take this case I was working on. A man discovered his father was not his real father when he tries to save his life, donating part of his liver. There is absolutely no match between them. Naturally excluded from the worry and burden, what does he do? He takes his holiday money and hires me to find his father some unknown relative in the hope that he can get be saved by a matching donor. The pool of suspects is big, given that the dying father was given up for adoption. Did the client ask me who his real father is? No. He says he doesn't care more about a stranger than about that man fighting for his life. I can just about hear your demand that I take the case, save that family, so I do just that. I spend hours that I hate going through parish records, decrying the local orphanage's records. As I get my answer – deducing the lawyer by day is also the baker by night, my client's father goes into surgery to receive a donated liver from a car crash victim. The car driver that died was a retired lawyer who was no longer fit to drive but refused terminally to give up driving. He was also the client's grandfather and the dying man's father. The client no longer needs his answer. Fate took care of itself – and laughed at my efforts.'

I hum in reply, hazily falling asleep, lulled by Sherlock's modulating voice, feeling safe and utterly exhausted.

In same last remnant of consciousness, I can feel a blanket wrap around Rosie and I, so very gentle. I'd swear she starts becoming unsettled as I've long stopped lulling and humming, until I hear the softest melody plucked out of my friend's violin. Peaceful, comforting, sonorific.

Sherlock chuckles softly. 'Genetics, John. Look at how well Rosie sleeps when I play the violin.'

_**.**_

_**Sunday.**_

By the end of the week, I took the plunge. I asked Sherlock to babysit Rosie as I went on an important errand. He heard the endless list of recommendations with a solemn expression and promised to abide by them. He also self-prompted the promise to evacuate my child out of 221B in case of a fire, which somehow did not help put me at ease.

'What do you mean a fire?'

'Hush, go now, John.'

Still a bit worried, I got a move on. The sooner I went, the sooner I'd be back.

Two hours later and I arrive back. My daughter is in a pink tutu, has chocolate smudges all over her face and she is holding...

'...a pistol, Sherlock?'

He clears his throat. 'A water pistol, John.'

'But _why?'_

He points at a row of rubber ducks over the top edge of the sofa. My daughter is happily squirting them with water, trying to topple them over.

'There were evil ducklings taking over the world, John. Rosie acquiesced to help restore order to civilization. She's a natural too.'

'At fighting evil rubber ducks?'

'And shooting.'

I stop short. 'Really? After all the chocolate you fed her?' _I'm feeling a bit proud here. A bit not good, John, your girl is on a sugar high right now._

'We baked chocolate cupcakes. I'm introducing her to basic chemistry. Measurements, solutions, elements and compounds, sucrose levels, pH. She still calls it magic when the cupcakes come out if the oven, though. Baby steps. We will need to repeat the experiment in order to consolidate the knowledge', he sighs. 'She licked the bowl. Everyone should lick the bowl. It's the natural reward for baking.'

'She's got chocolate all over her face!'

'She struggled without the spoon.'

'What happened to the spoon?'

'I got the spoon. I baked too, John. Your daughter needs to be taught to share.' And with that he prompts: 'Rosie?'

She hands me the water gun with a smile. I look up. Only one duck left in the row.

_Right._ I shrug and press the trigger, from as far away as the door. Rosie cheers and giggles, as I get the last evil duck bull's eye. Sherlock smirks, infuriating as a know-it-all. He knows I owe him now.

It's been a long week._ It's been the best week._

_**.**_


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: I rediscovered the word "triumvirate" whilst looking for something other than "trilogy", and I liked it. I think I've been adjourning a dystopian piece for a long time, and so I started this weeks ago. I'm pushing it up on the cue, it's not fully sketched out yet. Don't get excited, I'm not a writer, remember?_

_Sure it's Britain, sometime in the future, don't ask me how Britain got there. Any similarities with real life people and events would have me as a much better writer than I am._

_I'm not repeating this warning to get attention. (Not a drama queen. Trust me, I deal with plenty of those, I know how they're like.) But: I'm not done with this story, and if it's too grim I'll take it down yet. It just fits my mood right now. -csf_

* * *

_**1..**_

Sherlock Holmes called them the _Triumvirate_ _of_ _Evil_. What a pompous name for a set of three of the most powerful and influential men in the Western culture of Today. But not even Sherlock, outspoken as he is in his devil-may-care attitude, would dare to call them out like that today. Not since these three started gaining power and traction on the media as the people's heroes, sanctified as saviours and vilified as miscreants alike. Polarised sides shouted out their opinions as facts, unwilling to hear each other. But those were the extremes, too busy belittling each other, causing us to miss the bigger picture.

Somewhere in the spectrum there were all sorts of opinions about the three wise men of Today, at least at first. Then slowly, but inexorably, all those dissonant voices were silenced – won over, some claim; enlightened, singled out, or plain bribed and threatened – others whisper; until all the press, radio and telly outputs, all the pub conversations and neighbours over fences in rural areas, followed the same mantra. The wining sides' words became attuned to the carefully scripted sentences of the power. And if you were not with them, then you were against them, queen and country. A traitor, a scoundrel, a misleading clown that would next say left was right and right was left. It didn't really matter which was which. The officials will tell you which way to turn, that's all you need to know, why ask questions, you must have a hidden agenda or like the authorities' spotlight.

Along with the quietening of any differing voices – mocked at first, then targeted by the public and finally outlawed by the government that made them offensive in the first place – came the publishing of official propaganda and then guidelines and laws with fines and imprisonment. The pace was slow, incremental, and so we missed its progress altogether.

No one thought it possible in the twenty first century Britain. If one man foresaw it first, the slow decline of democracy, lifting his head above the crowd to look straight in the beast's eye, it wasn't even Sherlock. It was his big brother Mycroft Holmes, who got side-lined from his "minor governmental position" early on, silenced by a powerful non-disclosure agreement and subject to official ridicule of disbelief if he shared the dark secrets he had had access to.

Mycroft has retired to a deserted island in the Pacific, I believe. Too bad. He might have helped give us the leverage we need. I hope he likes coconuts and gets plenty of those wherever he is.

Sherlock won't talk about his brother when we meet up in absolute secrecy, us a bunch of renegades, trying to keep ourselves together long enough to overthrow an insidious dictatorship of sorts (a validated dictatorship, some argue), and return some form of liberty to the land. Our biggest hindrance being that the voice of the official propaganda is also said to be the voice of the majority, nowadays. No one is too sure, because the polls are government issued anyway. It could be the British people are against us. There is no fight, they would say. We like the orders we're given. And those who don't conform to the standard message? They can pack up and leave. There's a new reason why Great Britain is an island nowadays. It's not just geography. It keeps itself whole, locked, tight, insular.

_**.**_

I walk the much too quiet London streets with a spring in my step. My hands in my jacket pockets, one clutching the provisional document allowing me to cross the territories under constant vigilance because I'm a doctor, and on the other hand my cocked handgun, taking no risks. I glance around sharply, detecting the usual snipers placed in the rooftops of high buildings. That's how peace is maintained nowadays in the tourist filled areas beyond, where I'm not allowed to enter. London has been split between postcard anachronism and hidden reality. Snipers are the game's judges, that keep the players to each of their fields. But if snipers are meant to keep the order of the lucky foreigners travelling on complicated visas, then how come the snipers are always facing the outskirts of the Tourist Area? Looking down on us? Why is the government so keen that us two groups not meet? Forget Big Brother, the Orwellian analogy is outdated. This is Big Voice In Your Head.

Just on cue, my phone rings in my pocket. I let go of the doctor's pass, not the gun, to take up the expected call.

"Is everything alright, doctor Watson, member 13369851 of the civilian population?"

'Yes, just fine. Thought I saw a funny shaped cloud, that's all.'

"Your report has been logged. No further action is required. We will send you a transcript of this interview later on. Goodbye."

'See ya', I hang up, doing my best to control an imminent outburst of short temper. Don't want to be invited for another Reintegration Camp, thank you very much. It was much too boring. Sherlock almost went bananas. That's when we found we had lost the influence of the elder Holmes by our side. Damn Mycroft and his rediscovered principles. He played right into their hand. So he got kicked out for his trouble.

At least he didn't have to see the inside of a Reintegration Camp. All physical work and absolute silence, enough silence to drive a man insane. No talking, no music, no dance, no religion, no internet, no sex, no contact with each other or the outside world. Just you and your darker inner self, and hard manual labour. After a while, most cracked by the sheer weight of their own demons, and that's how it was so clever. We were all so used to distractions, mind numbing telly providing us with the emotion thrills that compensated for the increased societal levels of loneliness reported, mock celebrity feuds online and outrageous political figures in ultimate absurd remarks contests playing the international arena. We couldn't cope when suddenly it was just us. I didn't crack, but it was close. I had something to keep a hold on my sanity, my friendship with the greatest man I've ever met. I kept replaying Sherlock's cases in my mind, much after they started feeling like strange, detached figments of my imagination and not real recollections. There might have been something in the drinking water too. I kept my faith in Sherlock and it got me through. Sherlock locked himself up in his mind palace, reorganizing the place in reverse alphabetical order. He now takes a couple of extra seconds to retrieve data, he's a bit messed up in the head, but he made it out sane. Just like me.

I still swear it was lucky they didn't persecute Sherlock Holmes like they did with so many other public figures. They are stuck in the Tourist Area. I hear they perform 24/7, give autographs and smile for the tourists' cameras as permanent access ambassadors to a country that is no longer like they portray it. They put on a show constantly in fear of becoming superfluous if they fall out of fame. Well, in some ways that has not changed.

I glance at my watch. I must hurry. Sherlock will be going out of his mind. He hates it when I take risks. I'm all he's got left of his beloved Baker Street, since Mrs Hudson went to live with her sister in the States (Mrs Hudson still had her double nationality, I hear they live in a nice farm) and 221B has had mandatory governmental cctv cameras installed, like all homes in Britain. Most people installed them willingly, under the guise of artificial intelligence helpers and with nice feminine names like Alexandra or Sheeri.

At first Sheeri would tell you how to make apple pie or how tall the Eiffel tower is. Now it gently reminds you it's time to get up, how to brush your teeth, when to put rationed petrol in your car and what your healthy, balanced takeaway meal, state ordered and delivered, will be (extra sauces if you are one of the 10 best productive employees in your company today). Under the new regime, the economy has soared to higher planes. There was unprecedented cash flow coming to the kingdom's safes. They take care of the ordinary citizen's every need. Even the need to think, question, or argument a point of view is done for you. All with streamlined efficiency.

Actually, I think doing any reasoning has been outlawed too. All important things have. Except for cricket and football. Those are national sports still.

I arrive at the familiar dark door with the golden numbers, lean in to the eye retina scanner (always gives me the shivers, that laser beam) and get IDed in.

The government knows who I am, alright. In fact, they technically own my biometric data. Hence why there is no more criminality, they tell us. All murders are recorded by Sheeri (et al), all fraudsters are caught by eye scanners and DNA markers, all shoplifters are sent to Reintegration Camps.

Sherlock is not amused.

There is, however, a triumvirate of powerful men who have methodically stripped us from our burdens – and liberties. And a bunch of renegades fighting them from the heart of Baker Street itself. That's us, by the way.

_**.**_

'Sherlock, I'm home!'

The man himself lowers his violin, the one luxury of personality he couldn't leg go. He hates it that Sheeri records his playing and refuses to play his own material, keeping his own creations locked up in his head.

'John.'

He looks relieved as he lays eyes on me. We do our little show for the cameras. He comes to hug me – as if it was absolutely normal that the detective was a hugger – and as he walks away he's got hold of my illegal gun to put it away, holding it hidden away from the cameras. I don't turn as he goes to the kitchen. The oven door, I hear. Ah, that's where he's hiding it today. No need for Sunday roasts when the kingdom provides nutritiously balanced meals.

Somewhere we still have some of Mrs Hudson's apple pie, frozen for posterity. And it isn't done to Sheeri's recipe.

'How was it, today?' Sherlock asks me.

'Young woman. She had been caught by the cctv handing out flyers under the bridge. Or maybe some concerned citizen panicked and turned her in. The tasers had roughed her up badly.'

'Another one? Still some renegades out there, then?' Sherlock dares to ask.

I know the correct answer by heart: 'Traitors, yes.'

Codename: Blue. One of our new operatives. I don't know her real name, it's best that way, I can't ever be coerced to give an information I don't know. But I suspect she's one of Molly's friends, Molly introduced her to us once.

Yes, Molly Hooper is one of us.

'Is that all?' Sherlock asks.

I blink. Right. Now for the code. 'I counted my steps today. You know, for exercise. Eighty-six steps across Baker Street from the Tube.'

_There are 86 of us now. I recruited the young woman. _She had come to a meeting and left without a word. The leaflets were not our idea. Too dangerous to hand out proof of dissidence. I offered her a different kind of danger, alongside us. Gave her hope.

'I thought you said eleven steps yesterday.'

_Meeting tonight at eleven. Will do._

'You're hearing things, I tell ya.'

Sheeri settles our dispute, in its shrill automated voice: "Doctor Watson has said eighty-five yesterday, according to my transcripts, Mr Holmes."

'Ta, Sheeri', I mutter, disguising a grimace.

"You're welcome, doctor Watson."

_**.**_

Night filters in through every window and every pore of 221B. I know it's dark and late. If I hadn't held on to my father's analogue wristwatch instead of more modern 5G enabled wrist bracelets, I wouldn't be able to tell the time without waking up Sheeri. I want to avoid her insidious spying presence.

Eleven o'clock. Time to get the action rolling.

I furtively climb down the steps from my bedroom, carefully avoiding the creaking ones. There are no motion sensors on the landing just yet. Sheeri is thought to be enough to record our comings and goings. And besides, I'm just heading towards the bathroom. Very natural. Or it would be, if Sherlock was not about to meet me there.

Don't think the kingdom cares about our sexualities, even if there was something there, but I want to avoid the lowdown about STDs and how to stop their spread, that Sheeri is commanded to give any pairing. Romance is absolutely dead in Sheeri's AI world.

I walk the corridor in the darkness, knowing it by heart. I palm the wallpaper until I meet the frame. I open the bathroom door, sneak in and close the door after me, desperately trying to avoid the click of the catch.

'John.'

I jump a mile high as I turn, heart beating out of rhythm in my chest. We're caught!

'Shush!' I try, desperately, but it must be too late!

'Oh, please, John!' he decries, pulling up higher the thermos bottle in his hand. He shakes it in the air, suggestively.

'Sheeri?'

'Yeah. Inside. She won't be able to transmit from in there.' Looking me over he insists: 'Breathe, John.'

I glare at him. 'I'm a bit touchy, okay? They got me. They chipped me this afternoon.'

'GPS?' Sherlock's expression is at once all seriousness.

'Nano-neurotransmitters too. The whole shebang.'

GPS trackers, the type used to locate lost pets, were just the start. Every citizen accounted for. Next came the neurotransmitter levels modifiers. A deep skin tissue happy pills dispenser of sorts. That helped curb emigration, suicide and depression rates all at once.

'They must suspect you, John.'

I shake my head curtly. 'No. They're just paranoid bastards. Have you got my med kit?'

'Yes, of course. What should I do?'

I take a tight smile. 'I've got a chip nestled in my neck veins. Don't let me nick one and bleed out. No hospital would take me, no doctor in their right mind would help me.'

'No', he agrees solemnly. 'The only doctor in London who will take that risk is you.'

'Jackpot. Lucky me. I'm already here.'

'Sit down on the bathtub edge. I'll hold the lamp and the mirror. We'll get that out of you, John.'

'Sherlock?'

'Yes, John?'

'Thank you.'

'For what?'

'Risking your life to help me, for one.'

'You know me, John. I'm too selfish to share you', and he smiles warmly as he hands me the scalpel.

_**.**_

'You're late.'

Molly Hooper's voice is cold, so unlike the mousy morgue doctor we used to know. She has gone through quite a transformation. Quite, obedient government employee during the day, at nights like these she's an empress of fire and death. Her job has given her a particular ease with the scalpel and chainsaw, but her special talent does not lie there. She's... incredible.

Sherlock speaks first, after a wave to the gathering crowd. We all defied the imposed curfew to be here tonight. At midnight as usual. 'I had to _clean_ John.'

'Another chip?'

'More than that.'

She looks past the detective, onto me.

'Is he fit to be here?' she asks coldly.

'He'll be fine', Sherlock vouches for me.

We managed to avoid the bloodbath in the tub. No traces were left. I've got a bandage on my neck and my shirt buttoned up.

'He doesn't look fine.'

'_I said_ he's fine', Sherlock insists. She shrugs.

'Better to bleed out than to give us all away', Molly mutters as she turns back to the crowd. She scans the familiar faces with efficiency. Once there was an unfamiliar face, a spy sent from the enemy side. She grabbed my gun and shot the spy before I could open my mouth. We helped her dispose of the body, of course we did, it helps when you have a morgue full of those and you are the records keeper.

My turn for a shy wave about, behind her back. I get a few smiles returned. I recognise Blue on a front row of the seats. She looks hopeful, young, full of belief. She's the reason we fight, she's the future.

Sherlock takes me by the arm and leads me to a couple of seats nearby. Molly walks steadily to the pulpit, looking us all in turn. Double checking our identities, no doubt.

'I heard an auspicious rumour today.' Immediately the room erupts in precocious uproar. Molly gestures angrily. Immediately the whole place falls eerily silent. 'The triumvirate doesn't feel quite as secure in their perch since the shut down we caused last week. They are looking for leverage. Something that can legitimise their power once again. An object of dominion, sovereignty, victory. I heard it's going to be the crown jewels themselves.'

Sherlock blinks, opens his mouth, stops himself. My heart hurts for my friend. His brilliant mind slowed down is one of the most painful things to witness. I keep absolutely still, silently willing him on, avoiding any extra pressure. Finally Sherlock reconnects to the moment, and speaks out:

'It's been years that the crown jewels have been sold to a private collector to pay for the royal family's increasing financial debts. The Tower of London in the Tourist Area has nothing more than nice glass mounted on brass, in display. I believe Jim Moriarty was one of the last person's to handle the real deal.'

Molly looks down to Sherlock from her high perch. Gone are the blushing, the stuttering, the awkwardness. Gone is that adoration of the detective too.

'Then it's glass they'll seize, Sherlock. It hardly matters. The people will believe what they are told.'

Sherlock opens his mouth once again, no sound comes out. She waits kindly. He gives up, blank, empty. She presses her lips thin and carries on. I let my hand go find Sherlock's trembling one and wind my chubby fingers around his cold ones.

'The crown jewels are going to be moved, for the ceremony. We need to intercept this, stop the transfer. We must dent their power as we can. Erode it as water erodes rock. Steady and patiently. One day we'll have our country back. And we'll return those jewels to where they belong, away from the greedy hands of the triumvirate!'

The room cheers madly. Molly finally allows a short shy smile that makes that crowd the more wild, as they see the human side of their leader; and, of those who knew the pathologist, who would have guessed?

I glance at Sherlock. He's got his eyes closed and looks immersed in thought.

Hopefully somewhere in his mind palace he's planning the best way to go about snatching the nation's jewels.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: I kept going._

_My mother calls me a cynic on a regular basis. She says I have no trust in the world, and that I'm cold-hearted. I'd like to dedicate this story to my mother, therefore. -csf_

* * *

_**2..**_

I wake up this next morning with a stiff, inflamed neck and a bit of a dizzy spell as I get up. By the time I reach the living room downstairs, Sherlock is already up, absently playing with his microscope. There's a new Sheeri on the mantle. We don't ask how it got there anymore, it'd be naïve.

'Whatever happened to the skull, Sherlock?' I ask, taking a tired seat in my armchair.

'Confiscated, I believe. Then again, Mrs Hudson might have taken it with her.'

'Oh. I hope she did.'

Sherlock is looking longingly at the empty space by my side of the mantle. 'Breakfast?' I try to distract him.

'It's been delivered. It's in the kitchen.'

Sometimes I forget; I'm not allowed to choose toast and poached eggs. I'm to take one of the kingdom's rationed breakfasts. They are flavoured powders in isothermic packets and you add water and stir through. Out of habit I read the label. Funny, there's an apple and cereals in there. I guess the state doesn't trust chewing.

'Want yours, Sherlock?'

'Already have mine.'

I smirk as I focus on his microscope studies. Don't think consuming it is in his plans.

'Is there really apple in there?'

'I've found plant cells', he admits, unsure.

Sheeri interrupts us with a ten minute long prerecording of the importance of breakfast. Sometimes I think Sheeri is a bit too sarcastic. We allow her to babble on as Sherlock and I pretend to be comparing notes on his microscope findings. Our conversation is whispered under the constant assault of Sheeri's babbling.

'How's the neck, John?' Sherlock asks first.

'Got the kink out of it, for sure', I retort carefully.

He hums. Then lowers his eyes to the empty slides and acknowledges: 'I've got no plan. My head... it's not working like it used to. It's empty. Boring. Plain. John, I hate this.' He grabs a painful hold of his dark curls between clawed fingers and pulls at them. The physical pain caused barely scratching at the surface of the mental anguish. I can see his sunken eyes, his gaunt skin that hardly ever sees daylight as there is no longer a reason to go outside, the desperate lines wrinkling his forehead. 'John, my mind has melted without the proper stimuli. The cases, they provided me with mind food. And now... they're gone. I'm no longer a detective. I'm... a waste of space.'

I grab his hand, enrolling it in my rough, calloused, ordinary one, and squeeze tight. I will never have him tell me that again, if I can help it.

'Not now and not ever, mate. We're here, we're fighting', I tell him, impressing as much strength as I can put into fleeting words. I hate seeing this Sherlock, defeated and deflated. As if he can't see him as the hero I do, I always will.

We cut our conversation as soon as Sheeri reaches the end of her educational message. I try to think of something _normal _to say. Something state approved. Sherlock asks first:

'Sheeri, are these Bramley apples?'

Sheeri draws out a research on Bramley apples for us and cross-references it with our issued breakfasts. Turns out they're 97% that variety, 2% of another and trace amounts of cyanide.

'What?' I stop whispering with Sherlock at once. _Cyanide?_

'Apple pips, John, they contain cyanide', Sherlock dismisses, snappy.

I transport my shocked gaze from the electronic ghost presence to my live friend. I missed this. A spark of his old brilliance. Even the delivery; affected, flaired, theatrical, uselessly arrogant. It's Sherlock all over.

'What is it, John?' he is surprised by the intensity of my gaze. 'It's not enough cyanide to be life threatening.'

_Today is going to be a good day._

'Nothing. I missed this.'

'Breakfast?' he doesn't quite get it.

I just smile sunnily at him, and let him make whatever he wants of it.

_**.**_

Sherlock looks unsure, as he tugs his scarf around his neck, first looping it to one side, then to the other, finally sighing and letting the ends fall in despair. I smile, come over and help him rebuild that immaculate, unattainable detective image, forever engraved in my mind.

My friend's brain may have rotten in captivity and away from cases, but mine has only been kept online for the recollection of our past cases, of that brilliant Sherlock I'm never giving up on. I'll teach him to be himself again if I have to.

'Thank you, John', he says, quiet, childlike. It's wrong but I almost hoped for an insult covering the vulnerability. Like old times.

'Ready?'

He nods, discreetly patting the pocket where his fake medic pass for London is nestled.

Today we're trying the impossible. We're heading to the forbidden area. The Tourist Area. Sherlock Holmes and I have one last big heist to pull. Trying to bring London to its senses, then all of the UK.

We may never live to see this watered down version of 221B again. It feels like home, but no longer a sanctuary, not since the clients stopped showing up, Mrs Hudson isn't around to dust (England shall fall) and Sheeri is an unwelcome addition. They made 221B feel estranged from us. And they took our skull.

I pat my pocket in turn. The one with the illegal handgun.

_**.**_

The familiar streets of London are nothing like their former selves, they are too quiet, too orderly. All human movement is as mechanic as the rotating barbershop signs or the flickering red and green traffic lights. We seem to play our part in the clockwise movement of a nation, dutifully fulfilling our roles. No passion, no creativity, no self-determination.

The billboards overhanging the streets are particularly oppressive. In a land where the government determines your whims and wishes through carefully demographically selected publicity, there is hardly a need for general public targeted advertising. So now the giant billboards contain only the official message, in bright, sharp colours and bold, strong fonts.

_We are strong, we are one, we are fulfilled because we are home._

Travelling for fun has been outlawed, of course. Too many people did not return from vacations abroad.

_Live in the moment, live in the now._

Citizens with questions are just weak people giving way to their anxieties, we're told.

_We're here to help. We're family._

Obviously the government has not met the Watsons family... Nope, clearly a typo somewhere on that billboard. Not going to comment on that one. Too easy...

_Excel. Exceed. Enlist._

Army. Been there, done that. Another lifetime, it feels. This is not the same country.

_Improve, impact, intel._

Not higher education, no. Spy schools. They're a big hit. 100% employability. We think. They're not 100% transparent.

_Honesty. Integrity. Dependability._

Oh, this is the gold mine right here. The Triumvirate message primordial message. This is how they need us to see them, to admire them, to idolise them. Three old men – actually some say one is a woman, it hardly matters the gender – three old cronies that took over parliament and the rule of law.

These are the enemies.

By the way, the monarchy is unharmed. They live at the Tourist Area too. It's either them or some cardboard cut-outs, we're never sure from the pictures in the state managed news outlets.

By my side, Sherlock is whistling a tune under his breath. I swear I recognise one of his violin creations. It's untainted beauty against a grim world indeed.

There's no coming back from this, is there?

_**.**_

Sherlock Holmes still knows the ins and outs of London. Their foundations are buried somewhere in the genius' mind palace. Sometimes – only too often – Sherlock can't access them. He says the pathway has crumbled into rubble and debris, and a mighty migraine settles in as he tries to make use of his once brilliantly tuned brain. He then spends days lying down on his bed or the sofa, crippled by sharp bursts of pain in his head, vaguely unaware of the cold rags I lay on his forehead in hope of providing some relief.

Every once in a while we get really lucky, and in a glimpse of his earlier brilliance Sherlock finds the pathway unblocked, clear enough that he can access those stored memories, the precious data inside his repository.

'Are you sure you're alright?' I whisper tightly.

He nods sharply. His reticence in answering aloud is advised. My phone rings. There's no way I can not take this call. I grimace quickly and pull my phone up.

'Hey up.'

"Doctor Watson, member 13369851 of the civilian population, you are here by advised that unintelligible, juvenile and whispered speech are rude. We advise you to reconsider your conduct. This call has been recorded for internal verification during our internal quality audits. Have a productive day."

I disconnect the call with a shiver I can't suppress. It brings back memories of the Reintegration Camp. I cross my arms in front of me, feeling strangely cold as the cctv cameras follow us as we pass them by.

A tall bulky man in dark and imposing military fatigues stops us with a imperious gesture. He doesn't point his taser at us, but it's subtly set along his thigh, his arm muscles tenses and the trigger is caressed deviously. 'Halt! Identify yourselves!'

In concerted gestures, Sherlock and I hand out our IDs. He scans them quickly. My heart beats wildly as the silent seconds trickle by.

'Why two of you?'

'Two patients', Sherlock retorts, looking aptly bored. The military guard accepts the simple reasoning. Sherlock adds, in a conspiratorial whisper: 'They're twins, once conjoined. We're hoping they have the same genetic illness. If it turns out one fell off a ladder and the other near drowned in the bathtub, I'll be sorely disappointed.'

The guard looks bewildered. Lucky for us, he decides Sherlock is sane enough. We waves us through. I give him a short goodbye military salute. He remains indifferent, in a disgrace to the uniform.

My regular heartbeat only resumes, I must confess, after we crossed the corner and long left the man's weapon range. Adrenaline is not so welcomed these days.

Sherlock selects an old brickwork building, once a department store or office building, now state sponsored accommodation. He holds my medical pass high against the scanner. It beeps, goes green and allows us in. I follow quickly, before those doors close again with a metallic echo.

"Welcome, you patient is in floor three", the pleasant female electronic voice announces.

Sherlock confides under his breath: 'Doctors never run out of jobs. Always someone sick somewhere, if you choose a building big enough.'

We hear a metallic noise from the door behind us and the detective pulls me away from the main hall onto a shallow empty space behind the turn of the stairs. We wait with suspended breaths. What we are doing right now, a Reintegration sentence would be the least painful outcome.

"Welcome, your patient is in floor three", the voice repeats to the newcomer.

'A bit too late there, Sheeri, he's a stiff now. I'm a copper, that's why I'm here!' there's humour in the gruff retort.

We recognise the voice with a tight glance at each other.

The electronic surveillance gurgles for a second then plays: "You have been identified as detective inspector Lestrade. Welcome, your dead body is in floor three."

Greg sniggers – he obviously never had to go to Reintegration – and moves on to the only lift.

'Psst!' I dare to call out. He turns abruptly, hand flying to his service taser gun. Then he recognises us, shocked. Keeping his head, he glances at the awkward angle of the cctv camera and slides away in our direction before the lift comes.

He's kneeling by our side as the lift doors open and shut behind him.

'Sherlock! John! I thought you two were on the Tourist Area, signing autographs all day, living the good life! How did you escape? Why _would_ you escape? I need to get you back!'

It's a relief in itself to reconnect with the detective inspector with the loyal brown eyes and overwork gait. Feels like old times at once.

I decide to take over the conversation for now. 'We were never there, Greg. Been in Baker Street as usual.'

'So what are you doing here now?'

'Trying to sneak into the Tourist Area to steel the crown jewels.'

Greg starts to grin, then falters, and looks from me to Sherlock, expecting an explanation. The genius opens his mouth, looks blank and forgetful, and blinks mutedly.

I try to dismiss: 'Reintegration Camp. He's not been himself since.'

I see Greg pale as understanding dawns on him.

'And you, John?'

I shake my head briefly, my heart beating hard in my chest. Perhaps it was a mistake, I shouldn't have trusted Greg. He doesn't understand. He's not part of our resistance. Life is good for him. He's got nothing to worry about. Why would he help us?

'Just turn and leave, Greg. Better yet, give us a couple of minutes and then report us. It's the safest thing to do. I can still take out a couple of them with my gun. Maybe that's enough time for Sherlock to escape.' I bring out my gun, my last faithful companion of war.

'A couple of minutes? Wait, stop that! Stop the ruddy warfare! You really are trying to go to the other side of the divide? John, that's... a chance in a million you'll live. Is it that bad here? Are you ready to give up here for a wacky plan out there?'

For Sherlock, yeah. I can't stand to watch him lose himself the more every day. I'm losing my best friend and whole world.

'It's okay, you don't have to understand, Greg. You're not under constant attack. You're not told to shut up, go home, be grateful for being allowed to go to work, pay taxes and be a target. You fit in, you're safe. Your police work has become the easier, even a child could solve any wrongdoings...'

'Yeah', Greg grimaces. I stop short, reading more into him from how I got to know him as a friend. Perhaps not so nice a change, then.

'Why would you give up a safe life?' I whisper.

In a tired, worn out voice Greg tells us: 'Anderson had a spat with Donovan. He told off on Donovan and she got sent to one of those Camps. You know Donovan, she can have a big mouth. I never saw her again. What in the world goes on in there?'

I shake my head, refusing to answer.

It's Sherlock that talks, unexpectedly: 'John almost didn't make it. Talk about sarcastic comebacks and those that can't keep them inside.' It's the old Sherlock that imperiously glances to me, but looks oddly human at the same time when our eyes cross.

'I'm fine!' I snap, almost too loudly. The three of us glance warily at the camera.

Greg makes a rash decision. 'Okay, guys, I'm with you. Count me in.'

'You've come here on work', I remind him.

Greg shrugs. 'The guy's dead, he's got time to waste. So what about those crown jewels? Are they even the real thing? I hear they were all glass now, to pay up for foreign debt after the last world war.'

'It's alright, mate, we're not wearing them.'

_**.**_

Sherlock pickpockets the basement door lock and we stumble inside eagerly. The dark, mouldy room has been clearly left disused for some time.

Greg Lestrade starts patiently: 'It's not that I don't trust you, Sherlock, but how is being down here going to help us?'

The consulting detective rolls his eyes with gusto. That's okay by me, I missed _that_ too.

'It's a Victorian building, Lestrade. The old sewage system did not drain directly to the city's main sewage', the detective explains, as he runs his fingertips all over the exposed walls. 'This building in particular was connected to the Thames, feeding it raw sewage, bath water and fire sprinklers runoff in case of fire – which happened once only, in January 1907.'

'Alright, so what about that?'

'John would call it a pop culture reference.'

'To what exactly?'

'Bruce Lee. Be like the water and flow', he prolonged his words along with a vague gesture. 'Have I said it right, John?' I'm giggling hard now. Greg blinks hard. 'At this time and with the rising tide', he adds, 'I expect the current to lead us into the heart of the Tourist Area.'

'Why didn't you just say that?'

Sherlock shrugs, smugly. 'What would be the fun in that?' At that perfect moment something gives in under his fingertips and a previously invisible door swings back in the stucco wall.

We smile, relieved. Sherlock's got his magic back. It's bright and pure and full of a bursting fireworks type of energy that I'll always remember as his alone, as if his was the power to command the stars in the universe.

Oblivious to my adoration, he pushes through at once, into the dark damp. I unearth my phone and drop it on the murky floor (it's not like I'm needing it any more), take a few deep breaths to slow my accelerated heartbeats, and follow willingly. At the rear, Greg hesitates a moment—

'Wait, we can't go yet.'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: I'm sorry it's a bit bumpy; wrote it in bits and pieces._

_I'm a bit surprised, if I'm honest, that there's someone out there. I'm not your typical writer, if this plotline is anything to go by. It's looking like 5 (or even 6) chapters in all. -csf_

* * *

_**3..**_

'Wait!'

We all look back at Greg. He's biting his lip, looking a tantalising mix of guilty and worried.

'Second thoughts?' I ask, as neutral as I can be.

His body language immediately registers honest surprise. 'No, John. It's just... We are going to need some help.'

I'm aghast already, but Sherlock senses more: 'Who do you have in mind, inspector?'

He takes whatever excuse he can grab to lighten the mood. 'Can't you just call me Greg? It's my name.'

Sherlock blinks. 'Probably not', he replies, too honest. Points at his temple and explains: 'Short term memory problems.'

Greg's face goes a greyish shade of pale. He always cared a lot about our skinny friend, having seen him rise from his worst in the mean streets of life, possibly strung up and still genial, back when Sherlock couldn't remember the inspector's surname either.

'_Inspector_ or _Lestrade_ will do fine in that case, Sherlock. Look... hmm... I don't suppose you've been in touch with your brother.'

'Mycroft?' Sherlock is surprised.

Greg forces a smile. 'You remember his name, good. Yes, Mycroft. If anyone can help us is Mycroft.'

Sherlock casts his eyes down. 'My brother has been exiled. I should think he's one of the lucky ones. Gone somewhere far, far away.'

'No, he hasn't.' Sherlock snaps his green eyes up, intense as precious gemstones.

'What do you mean, inspector?'

'Mycroft was the one who told me you were in the Tourist Area, Sherlock. He's here in London. I know where he's at. For heaven's sake, he hardly ever leaves the place! It's like his oversized security blanket!'

I interrupt, as the two men hesitate. 'Sherlock?' _Can you explain this?_

_Actually, I think _I _can._

'Mycroft wasn't lying, as far as he knew', I state, feeling so tired of the mental convolution, the lies and scheming intrigues in this era. 'That's what Mycroft was told. Assured, even. That was the deal, I presume. To protect you, Sherlock. Mycroft's one weakness, his baby brother. The triumvirate convinced him he had to give up his opposition to keep you safe.'

'Safe?' Sherlock depreciates with a sly smirk. 'We've been anything but', he says proudly, before glancing at me and losing his steady ground. There's a deep dark shadow looming in his eyes, one I often refuse to face.

Greg cuts in: 'Come on, give Mycroft some slack', he says forcibly. 'He's not unblemished by the turn of events. Mycroft... he's not quite as you remember him. Without you, Sherlock, he's just... Not got a reason to be himself, I suspect.'

Greg sometimes believes the two brothers' genius grew disproportionatly large out of spite for each other.

'You've been in touch with Mycroft?'

'Yeah, the poor sod, you kinda feel for the guy, all brains and no friends, you know. I guess you can say I've got a type when I choose some friends, you know... Don't go guns blazing, accusing him of not upholding freedom, overturning government, or something like that. No land should have its fate tied to a single man, not even if that is Mycroft _ruddy_ Holmes. It's too much of a temptation – and Mycroft is innocent in that regard – and too much of a burden. I can't begin to imagine what it has been like for him.'

Sherlock, I notice, is looking unconvinced. I clear my throat, put on my best placid demeanour and ask: 'Where is he then?'

Greg smiles in approval.

_**.**_

It takes a doctor to cross the restricted areas with the least amount of suspicion raised. That's he's gone and "excelled, exceeded and enlisted" is the rub. My gun and Greg's timely distraction worked wonders to neutralise a solitary guard that approached the apparently collapsed inspector in the street. The guard tried to regain ground, of course, but Sherlock punched him sharply. He's got a great intellect allied with the necessary brute force that desperate times call for. We snuck the unconscious man out of the way before anyone was the wiser. We'll have no more than 15 minutes until the missing guard is reported MIA and the cctv camera footage is scoured through. We don't leave much of a mystery after us.

I abandon my comfortable jeans to don the black and grey camouflage print fatigues, take up the standard issue taser and have Sherlock walk ahead of me. He adds his angriest scowl to the theatrical performance. Greg, a police inspector, walks by my side as if just called in to participate.

We've effectively turned invisible in the system's eye. No one looks twice at us, except for a brief "well done" from the regular citizens. They like to cheer on apparent misery; it seems they find comfort in numbers.

Some times I wonder if it's fair to free these people from their ignorance bliss, their self-chosen imprisonment in a world of comforting lies and half-hidden truths. It was their choosing, after all. And I'll bet half of them are just scared of the world functioning with no regards for them, so they join the winning side's cold comfort where they feel they have a voice, any voice; any dissonance is played down as exaggerations.

'We've got 10 minutes left, John', the inspector tallies. We shuffle my feet faster on the pavement, Sherlock keeping up, trustingly steady in front of the electric gun.

'This is it, up ahead', Greg singles out an establishment.

'A bakery?' I find it hilarious, for some reason. Maybe the tension is getting to me.

Sherlock is also smirking as he boldly walks into the shop, open for commerce but empty of customers. In fact, the one holding the purse strings nowadays is the state, they ration all foods and drinks. Treats are occasionally built up to with a points system for anniversaries and retirements. Shops like these run on state quotas. The state keeps them open for business and can shut them down just as quickly.

On the other side of an immaculate counter a man pipes icing, ever so carefully, over a fondant covered cake. A classical soloist music plays in the background. I stop respectfully by the door. Soon Greg does the same. Only Sherlock moves steadily on. The baker keeps focused on the task and remarks irritably:

'I'll be with you when I'm done. My work is important.'

Sherlock chuckles. 'When did I ever pay any heed to those words, brother dear?'

The icing blurs out of the piping bag, ruining the immaculate design. The man with the slouching shoulders and the gingerly hair looks up in quiet shock.

'Never since you were three years old, or I wouldn't recognise my own brother any more.'

'Mycroft.'

'Sherlock.' And he looks beyond, to us by the door. His still sharp eyes focus on me. 'I see doctor Watson still has not deserted you. And I find your guide to my whereabouts.'

'John's fine and so am I', Sherlock replies to the body language instead. I smirk proudly. I taught my friend that trick. It really annoys Mycroft.

'Came to boast of your lovely life in the Tourist Area?' Mycroft trues to scoop off the blob of icing. He flicks ig off with prejudice.

'Came to ask for your help bringing down the Triumvirate.'

By my side, Greg shivers uncontrollably. In his defense, he's not had weekly underground secret meetings. To his eaes we've just stared something heretic.

Sherlock has got all of Mycroft's shocked attention now; the older Holmes is drinking every word, every twitch of a muscle of the man who is transparent to him still.

'I gave you safety', he hisses in a sudden loss of control.

'You may have sent it my way, but I never received it.'

Mycroft's blue eyes open wide. Then narrow to a fraction of themselves, looking all dark and ominous. The Holmes brothers are not great on forgiveness.

'I trust you have a plan, Sherlock.'

'Not yet.'

Mycroft voice is tense. 'Take some cake. Sugar has always helped me think', Mycroft offers as he discards the apron. 'It stimulates the firing synapses, although the doctor might frown upon excesses.'

'Interesting design. Geometric pattern, oddly labyrinthine, ridiculous sugar flowers. John, come take a look at this.'

I go look. It's cake. Neat looking cake.

'I've had plenty of free time. I like to innovate', the former government official claims as I look at the odd squiggles and flowers made up of icing.

'This is a map', Sherlock states before the icing swirls. 'And a very good one. Tourist Area, I presume.'

'And gateways too', Mycroft adds.

'We're going through that one', the younger points.

'Oh, I wouldn't if I were you. You forget the piranhas.'

'There are no piranhas in the Thames', Sherlock decries.

'There are now, courtesy of our leaders. Do not take the ones marked with black roses, Sherlock. You should try gardening some day. Black roses are notoriously hard to cultivate. I've tried myself. Too much free time nowadays. I almost sat down to watch the grass grow. No, I think we shall try that red rose there, near the Happy Anniversary Sweetheart sign.'

'What? I call the shots, Mycroft! It's my plan! I have a team, you have... cake!'

'I would love to argue, but aren't you on some sort of time restraint?' Mycroft drawls, unaffected.

'Well, yes, as a matter of fact, yes.'

'Then we leave now, through my basement. In fact, before those four guards reach my front door would be advisable', he adds looking over Sherlock's shoulder.

The detective snarls angrily but gestures us over at once. I glance beyond the clear glass of the establishment's front door. A bunch of guards having their taser guns brought up.

We evade Mycroft's saccharine paradise through the back of the shop without further complaints.

_**.**_

Intelligent and articulate ways are not entirely forbidden nowadays, shout your logic as loud as you like; they are however persecuted, ridiculed and anyone joining your side is as carefully alienated as you are from then on. They liken it to a naughty child being put on a time out. It may cost you your livelihood and your family's safety, but no one said _you couldn't have your say._ In a belittling, taunting fashion, they frequently urge you to, in fact. They love to see you snap.

When the powerful ones themselves became aggressor and bully towards the weak speaking out their beliefs – whichever these may be, correct or wrong is irrelevant – that's when we lost the important mosaic of differing opinions that keeps a society rich and balanced. Those days are long gone. Even thinking about them gives me the shivers. That was a liberty we didn't quite treasure and fought to keep, as it was fought for us many, many generations ago.

We had fun in our internet spats, under cover of anonymous profiles. We felt that when we won an argument by insults and misrepresented partial truths we were made all powerful. Golden gods for the day. In fact, we were all losing our collective power. Different opinions got ironed out quickly, by constant attack and the levelling influence of social media with their influencers and neat labelled boxes. Everything had a box, everything was normalised, then its _need_ was challenged. Soon leaving only the streamlined, readymade responses that became the voices of the masses.

Perhaps we weren't educated enough, on the silent lost voices of those that fought for our freedoms. Funny that, as we always bought the remembrance poppies. We just forgot those heroes gave us voices along with their lives. Voices to talk differences over and establish a long lasting peace. Voices to say "I disagree with you, but respect your beliefs". Some of our voices were used to belittle and bully instead, the winners versus the losers, the masses rising up to fight for the entrenched powers in their self-righteous, often victim stance prone.

We were so desperate for causes, and petitions, and fund-raisers that none would stick around in our memories too long.

We were a fast food nation of beliefs as we were of brands, idols, and trends.

We took politician lies as exuberant discourses, we allowed ambiguity and backstabbing as a confirmed sign of social intelligence. Never truly believing one day we'd be the ones in the wrong end of the stick.

Yet we never really debated our values and freedoms. We assumed their understanding as universal and fixed. That was just too simplistic.

We all miss those days, the narrowing opportunities soon to be lost still within our grasp. Before we lost it all.

'_John, are you with us?'_

It's Sherlock that calls me, lifting me from my abstractions. The long Victorian coal tunnel is a far cry better than sewers yet just as oppressing around us, with the tight pack bricks, the blackened dirty railed paving and the low hanging ceiling that makes all the others stoop carefully.

'I'm here, mate. How's the headache?'

'Barely a three, John. Nothing to worry about.'

I always worry about Sherlock now. His migraines can be severely debilitating and these – the drastic change in routine, the mental cognition onslaught, the quick fire responses and snap decisions required – are the sort of things that quickly drains my mate now.

The impending feeling that time is evading us, that we are lost in a race against the giant clockwork of humanity never quite leaves me or my companions. It becomes natural that Greg asks advice on a cold case, past-Sherlock days, up ahead. They whisper the clues and findings as if it was all important to recreate a version of the familiar past.

That leaves me with Mycroft. I was fine with silence, for silence's sake, but he too choses to fill the empty space with futile conversation.

Mycroft scrutinised me with a deep piercing gaze, not unlike his brother's old ones. Finally he took one solid breath. _Target locked._

'Why wouldn't you tell my baby brother your secret, doctor Watson?'

My footsteps barely maintain their steady rhythm.

'I don't know what you are on about. Have you always been this cryptic?'

'Your secret, John, is killing you on the inside', he states; too enigmatic, too artistic. Maybe he really should take up baking and decorating edible works of art when all this is said and done.

I nod, not at all upset with the all-seeing Holmes.

'It's getting better.'

'Is it now?' he returns significantly, looking straight at me. And I hate loath him for expressing that doubt.

'Absolutely', I assure, drily.

He nods, slowly. 'Your optimism is a force of nature, John. Don't ever lose it.'

I smirk tightly at that.

Soon the four of us reach a heavy looking trap door, halting our march. In the flickering darkness around our torches we hear echoes of footsteps, chirpy conversations, the wheels of pushchairs. With a twist of the gut I identify almost a hysterical laugh rising up inside me. I had forgotten what everyday life should sound like. Careless but industrious, happy but sombre, hopeful in the future.

Feels like a mockery, a travesty of the harrowing difficulties just on the other side of the tunnel, but much as Mycroft Holmes believed Sherlock was safe in this other side, I wonder of the lucky ones living a wider freedom really on the Tourist Area know how the oppressed on the other side feel like. It if they could care enough to find out.

Sherlock works the lock. Greg and Mycroft have tense whispered argued words a few meters into the darkness. I wait in coiled expectation. Feels like I've been waiting long years for this.

The trap door opens. Plenty of well dressed, well rested people on the streets, looking on ahead on a concerted effort.

One by one we emerge from the darkness and look on as well.

On the big projection screens around Piccadilly, the Three Wise Men of Today's Era are shown looming over the crown jewels. There's a suspended moment in time when the audience awaits the heretic movement towards the symbol of a nation, then greedy hands reach out, grab it leaving oily fingerprints on the immaculate gems, and raise it high in the air. The audience collectively gasps. Then someone cheers, others join in. Laughter, delighted and childlike, from people who cannot tell the utterly devastating significance of the act. They perceive those crown jewels as a fancy party accessory for a nation. Tonight, their fun begins, as across the devide the vast majority of the nation toils in hard work. They shall be watching this through their televisions, laptops, phones, and AI mirror interfaces (the one's in the bathroom cabinets can be particularly creepy). I'll bet Sheeri will turn the broadcast on in every town, in every house and every room. A collective, national celebration is in order.

'Oh no, we're too late.'

I look on, willing myself not to look away in shock and horror. It's too late, our efforts in vain, nothing more to be done now.

Sherlock is quick to grab me as my knees buckle. Greg seconds his effort at once, bewildered.

'John, mate, are you alright?'

Sherlock assures me, strong, confident, _himself_: 'It's not over yet, John. Not until we win.'

'Sherlock, what's wrong with John?' Greg insists, tense. The detective ignores him altogether. He's got an avenging expression marring his usual collected features, distorting it with brute force of hatred and despair.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: A bit smaller, but I think it's enough for one chapter._

_I may not show up on Saturday as it's been a tough week. -csf_

* * *

_**4..**_

'It's not all lost yet, John. Trust me.'

I take Sherlock's words to heart and let them give me new strength.

'What now? We can't go back ever again. We can't stay here. We've got no home', I whisper, harsh and tense. Hurt and lost.

He nods to let me know he heard me, but his expression tells me of wild stubborn determination.

'So, they've got the crown jewels? I say we go steal them.'

Greg hisses at once:

'You can't just steal the crown jewels!' and he silently begs for Mycroft's support by his side. The older genius shrugs and assures:

'Fine by me, they're glass anyway. The originals got sunk with the Titanic, when a foolish young royal offered them to a chorus girl as a token of his undying love.'

I brush Sherlock's help away, feeling stronger on my own. The detective returns to his speech, arrogant and full of hot air just like the old Sherlock:

'Of course I can take the crown jewels, I wouldn't even be the first.'

The inspector scowl. 'Jim Moriarty? He doesn't have them now, the three most powerful men in the nation do, and they made Moriarty's shenanigans look like child's play. They're not just about to hand them over if you say "please"!'

'Not unless we make them hand them over, then', Sherlock maintains his determination.

'Do you even have a plan?' Mycroft queries, acting bored.

'Yes, I believe I do', the detective answers solemnly.

I smile sunnily. _A good day. There's still hope._

_**.**_

We cross the streets carefully. I try to keep a low profile in my camouflage print and envy Sherlock and Greg's shabby but civilian clothing. Mycroft, the bastard, probably kept a collection of dozens of pristine three piece suits from his heyday and doesn't look the least out of place even now. I take cold comfort that he's got a sizeable green icing smudge on the back of his thigh that no one has informed him of yet. We're heading towards Buckingham palace. We've been there before, three of us at least.

Penetrating one of the best guarded premises in the world is paradoxically made easier by the publicity stunt and media circus and frenzy parked just outside. No one seems to pay us enough attention. There are reporters here from the state news and from all over the world. There's even a bunch of scouts boys making a journalism piece to earn a badge.

'We split', Greg volunteers the suggestion. 'Have a good look around. We meet back here in ten.'

Mycroft takes the crowd, mingling with ease. Sherlock and Greg head towards the back of the fenced gardens, I go the other way round.

Armed guards, electric fences, possible landmines behind the fence. All 100% unknown and 100% plausible nowadays. Fear itself is the main deterrent here. It will take a brave soul to breech the perimeter.

I come across my mates quicker than I expected. In fact they are doing such a lousy job that I just about sneak up on them. They are talking quietly before I announce myself and something in their tone of voice tempts me to eavesdrop.

'So why now, Sherlock?' Greg is asking. 'John says you two have been part of this underground resistance from the start. Why not settle in the part of renegades, it suits you both well, you know? Why take so much more of a risk now?' I hear the inspector insist. There is curiosity, but also a fatherly wish to advise and guide the impulsive detective's choices as always. I follow their footsteps, synchronizing with mine. They don't even turn.

Judging from his wool coat contour, in high contrast under the dying day's sunlight, the younger detective fakes a shrug. 'It was overdue, Lestrade.'

'Don't feed me lies. I'm risking my life by your side, give me the truth, Sherlock.' Greg is adamant. He's earned the right.

Sherlock nods, his back looking broken as his shoulders sag some more. After a few fortifying seconds, Sherlock elaborates:

'John had it the worse', he admits quietly, in a subdued voice, 'in those Reintegration Camps. Sometimes because he was standing up for me. What they did to John', he shakes his wild mane of curls by the light of the sunset, 'he's not over it yet. Physically, I mean. Torture, I think. John won't admit it, but eventually even an ordinary person like I am now can put two and two together.'

'Go on... I'm listening.' There's an uncertain edge to the inspector's voice now. I silently hate the inspector for not challenging the detective's self-doubt at once. I'm not important here, Sherlock is.

'John's heart is not as strong as it used to be. Some days, I see he struggles to get up in the mornings. As if he was accustoming itself to that deadly stillness in sleep. During the day, his heart often starts racing wildly and all colour drains from his face in a desperate last act to preserve life. Then there are dizzy spells and dead faints... I hate that he has to go out, that he keeps his job as a state's doctor. I can't stand not being there with him, not knowing if his heart has decided to beat for its last time miles away from me. You can't begin to imagine what it's like to be afraid one morning John is not going to come down anymore... I'm an idiot, I've let John matter to me.'

Lestrade dares to put his arm around the trembling figure of the once overbearing detective.

I close my eyes tight, stopping in my tracks. Never thought he'd know. I smile proudly, then. But he's Sherlock, of course. There's no keeping a secret from Sherlock Holmes. And if I tried to keep it a secret it wasn't to take advantage of the diminished detective, it was to protect his heart, so that it could keep a steady beat for the both of ours.

'John, you're there!' Greg notices suddenly. 'Mate, are you okay?' he worries the next moment.

He caught me a bit flustered, and my eyes never stray from my best friend's honest face. I want to tell him I'm alright, that there is nothing to fear, I want to abate those harried lines from his youthful features.

Instead of accepting a white lie from me, something wild takes over Sherlock's expression. He scans quickly around, finds a young reporter in a tailored skirt-suit in a live satellite connection to somewhere remote, far beyond our confines, and he paces forward on a mission.

Greg just misses his arm by millimetres, failing to hold him back.

'Hello', Sherlock accosts the journalist with an angelic smile and a perfidious plan. 'Sherlock Holmes, I'm the expert you're interviewing for your piece...?'

Whether she believes the agency sent him, or she recovers quickly for an advantage, we'll never know.

'Mr Holmes, yes...'

'The news of my retirement have been greatly exaggerated.' And his smile turns goofily overdone.

By my side, Greg mutters angrily: 'What does he think he's doing?'

I don't know. _Expect the unexpected, with Sherlock Holmes._ Just like old times. Whatever happens, this is the Baker Street detective returned to his rightful glory. He's fully present, and engaged, and clever, quick, arrogant and vulnerable. _He's Sherlock._

'Mr Holmes, what do you think of the joyous occasion?'

'It's terribly sad. We're all prisoners here while the crown jewels have been sold to a foreign power and their glass replacement are on the hands of those three pillars of society filmed plundering the loot!'

'You're jesting, surely', she says, glancing nervously at the cameras. 'England is a free land, blooming under the current regime. Exports are—'

'We're not allowed a voice. In fact, see the guards running up to us right now? Oh, don't look so frightened, they'll know you aren't in on my devious interruption of broadcasted propaganda. In fact, I—' He stops short as he sees the guards rapidly surrounding not only him, the self-sacrificing genius, but also me and Greg.

Worse than that, the crowd starts booing Sherlock Holmes.

I step out in his defence at once.

'My god, can't you see?' I look around in utter disbelief, gesticulating broadly. 'He's right! We've been sold peace of mind at the cost of our freedom! Sherlock's right!' Faces turn away. Closed off, heavy faces that show no sympathy. Why won't they listen? Is the realisation they've been wronged to harsh to face? I scrutinise particular faces in the crowd, searching for answers. Some look sheepishly back at me, then face away. Not in refusal of my ideas, but in refusal of their power. We're lost because individually we are powerless. Oh, why won't they listen?

The taser gun's discharge hits me with its convulsing grip. Instantly I'm on the ground, twitching painfully under its commanding force, powerless to move an muscle of my own accord. Gorily dancing to a dead man's song. My eyes roll back, darkness takes over, and my last second of consciousness is marked by pure relief as the torture ends.

I exhale one last breath, my body is absolutely still as thought vaporizes into the ether.

'_John!'_

Terror emboldens that familiar voice, as a rhythmic thumping fills the darkness and the loud drenching sound of blood rushing through my veins again jolts me back to half-consciousness.

'_Fight, John!'_

I can hear the tears drenching those words, even as I lay in the limbo between realities.

'_I need you, John!'_

My eyelids flutter open as more blood flows up to my brain, an erratic but trustworthy breathing is taken over automatically. Someone has been looming over me, they stand back.

I feel sore, heavy, exhausted, and have a migraine I brought back from hell.

'_Don't you ever do that to me again, John.'_

Are really those tears in the great consulting detective's eyes? He reads the confusion of those raw, unprocessed sensory memories from moments ago, only he can make sense of the rising bile, the kaleidoscopic colours still floating in front of my eyes, the pain in every gasp, the gingerly movements of my twitching muscles.

'Your heart, John... The taser gun's discharge... I thought I lost— Your heart stopped beating. Mine may have stopped too.' His lips tremble onto a valiant sketch of a smile. 'They have both been successfully restarted, I can assure you. You taught me CPR, remember?' he adds with a crinkle of relieved humour in his eyes.

My gaze wonders about in the odd scene. So this is what victory looks, sounds, feels and tastes like. The ferric taste of blood still in my mouth. A crowd of strangers and guards gaping at us, unabashedly.

Sherlock places a warm palm gently cupping my cheek and that attracts my gaze back to source. I look Sherlock in his hauntingly green eyes.

'Sorry', I whisper with difficulty.

He chuckles, as if he half-expected the words, in half-disbelief as well, and feels he needs to shut his eyes tight before the rising tide behind them spills with the force of a tidal wave.

I think I've terrified Sherlock.

He's given his break when someone forces his way over in the bewildered void created by a shocked crowd, and with Greg Lestrade fronting the incomers, more and more people pour in the tight inner circle.

'John? Sherlock!'

I close my eyes, breathing evenly. My heart beating steadily to Sherlock's own rhythm. His resting hand never leaves my chest, measuring, studying, reassuring us both.

Too bad I'm still laying on a filthy pavement. I'd be touched by the nice caring around me if I wasn't the wretched ragged form on the ground.

'Keep it going', the journalist hisses at the cameraman that almost drops the apparatus.

The guards are bewildered, the crowd is confused, and Sherlock is venomous as he helps me up from the ground, I'm too sore to stand up straight. I do my best, though, out of useless pride, and am rewarded by a sharp collective breath as I fully extend at last. The crowd's eye is on me. It's as if they remember me suddenly, as Sherlock's authorised biographer and journalist.

'Doctor Watson', a voice says.

'Captain Watson', someone else corrects.

'John, from that Baker Street place', someone settles for. 'We know him.'

'He's an honest man. That posh bloke, he's all smoke and mirrors, but this guy, he's just a regular bloke like the rest of us. Hey, let John do the talking!' a guy demands from the crowd. The journalist who lost all control of her piece decides that's fair game. Other man and women, crowd and professionals alike, come closer. The guards hesitate to display force in such public manner. Their ear pieces buzz with short, tense orders. They stand ground, then start lifting their guns, aiming them at Sherlock and I.

Sherlock holds me up as my knees almost give in suddenly.

That little flicker of movement, of little consequence – for Sherlock always supports me and I support him – changes the whole atmosphere. One of the guards, that had his gun rudely pointing at my face, lowers it slowly.

'Captain Watson. I served under you in Afghanistan. I trust you to respect your orders. We're to go inside the palace... captain.'

I nod. A fair invitation is refreshing. Perhaps a bold new sign of changes to come.

Suddenly more guns drop. The mood starts to drift to a more natural, united stance.

A polite request, if I ever saw one. How could I refuse?

By my side, Sherlock's lips valiantly attempt to tug themselves up.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: In which John unwittingly started a revolution._

_Last one for this plotline. Sorry it's been a bit heavy. -csf_

* * *

_**5..**_

Every revolution needs heroes, a cause and a war. I'm a temporary hero fighting for freedom returned from a people controlling, despotic and self-serving state. Thanks to Sheeri, we are being broadcast live into every room of every house in the country and beyond. It's an odd follow up on the crown jewels bestowed on the Three Wise Men, just before. Not even a commercial break between us, for there is no free advertisement as such anymore.

The cause is not easy to establish in a soundbite slogan, under some catchy jingle tune and clever fireworks. Not a simile of today's fast food politics at all. And yet, paradoxically, it couldn't be simpler. We want our freedoms back; to vote, to reason among different factions and to come together in a varied unity. We want rid of the Triumvirate and to have another go at our lives. Imperfect tries as they may be, they are ours to have a go. Many of us want things to go back to as they once were – knowing they will never be the same again; for we ourselves have changed. A heavy load will forever rest on our shoulders, teaching us lessons for the future days. Tales will be cinematographed about our times – we hope to make ourselves proud heroes and not miscreant villains.

One day we will turn on the telly and marvel at the annoying length of the commercial break. We will turn to a significant other and start commenting on it, maybe admitting creamy butter and car insurance companies are not so bad after all, but stop short as we notice the telly is standing close by. Listening in. Paranoia is just the beginning of a healthy memory imprint. One day we'll feel too tired after work to go vote, but find unsuspected strengths to go to the polling station, because we wouldn't give away our voices again. He will have our say, whether our champions win or lose, we will be heard.

And then there's the war. That is exactly where we stand right now. Ready for a deterministic battle of a lifetime. A turning point. A dare in a universe where the odds are stacked against us. This is where we excel: us and the nation.

Sherlock Holmes is a transformed man. He rose in a time of need, and holds himself to the highest standards to impress me, to force me to keep up a difficult fight by his side. That he almost carries his friend as dead weight, supporting me by the waist as we stand side by side as equals, is an afterthought in his mind. _I'm the reason he excels; such as he is my reason to never give up._

Greg Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes have fallen behind in the crowd, I believe, for we are enough to keep his freak show on the road for now.

Somehow Sherlock has downloaded intricate maps from his damaged memory data base, and he waltz us both through the golden inlaid corridors of power and tradition with ease.

'It won't take long now, John.'

I nod, to let him know I heard him; but find I don't have many strengths left. My feet drag on centuries old tapestries on the marble floors, my vision blurs as stately figures dominate de canvas in oversized paintings looming over us.

We make our way to one of the offices, expectation drumming in our ears. Sherlock is too marred by this life not to accept the simple powers of persuasion from my gun over his beautiful logic, and he carries it held out in a steady grip ahead of us.

The room is drenched in darkness. A stale air, impregnated with an unmistakable odour of metal and human misery, fills the opulent interior, cheapening it. Here once dwelled the finest and the best of the country, where now we find a cold shape slumped over a papers covered desk, steadily tainting it viscous red.

'What the—' I start.

'Watch it, John. We're in the eyes and ears of the world, being broadcast as we speak. Keep your language to a family standard, if you please.'

I blink and look sideways at him. He looks at me. We start giggling and chuckling at the same time.

'Yeah, fine; but the dead body over there? I think small children should have been told to leave the room already...'

'Dully noted, and broadcasted out there', Sherlock assures me.

'What now?' I ask, looking around us. 'Who did this?'

'I'm so glad you asked. Get Sheeri up, will you? This is prime time crime drama and I'm about to solve it.'

Happiness and relief fill me as once more I get to fall back on a comfortable position as Sherlock's assistant, and the man himself falls into place with a grace and fluidity to do what he does best – _explain the world to me._ Well, and this time to the world itself.

'Blunt force trauma to the head, John. There, at the side of the face.' The consulting detective points at the body and looks over it with the familiarity of an undertaker and the fascination of a scholar. 'Damage to the cranial structure and cerebral mass. Instant death. I believe the expression is "he didn't even see it coming". A trauma like this is beyond the force most of us could inflict in one single, sharp blow. A weapon, then. But to smuggle and conceal a weapon in this room? That suggests premeditation. Someone already planned this. Someone who knew this man always sits on this desk, facing the door, whisky glass to his right, phone to his left. It's clear from the permanent indentation marks on the chair's padding. The question becomes how to be sure the victim stood in the right position. A slight slouch in the picture could alter destiny. Again, the desk contents, and the fine must of blood and brain matter sprayed all over. Almost invisible to the naked eye.' Sherlock smiles, that slightly deranged winning smile of his, as he presents two small spray bottles from his coat pockets, very much like the ones used to use for plain travelling, with two distinct liquids inside. He sprays the first bottle with a smug smirk of someone who missed this like as expression of self. That's alright, so did I. The second liquid transforms the scene into a parallel universe of glow in the dark specks all over the desk's surface, where there are find must blood splatters. 'The phone. The receiver is set back in place but you can tell by a sizeable void he was holding it up when it happened. And this, John', he says my name out of habit, I assume, for he's looking straight at Sheeri's mechanic eye, 'is an internal phone. He was talking to someone privately when death stroke.'

Phlegmatic, my arms crossed, I notice: 'Or he was asking for help.'

Sherlock's eyes gleam with the simple challenge. _He's enjoying himself._ Contradicting Sherlock is the sure way to milk his genius; he works better under pressure.

'Help for what? To type a document, tie his shoelaces? John, the man didn't know that was a death trap. That was the basis of the whole operation. One of the most hated rulers of the land was trustingly answering a call when death struck him. That narrows down the pool of suspects to two.'

Three take away one is two. I won't challenge that, not on national television, not yet.

His words hang in the balance, before I whisper:

'That is amazing, Sherlock. Just amazing.'

The detective coyly looks away. It's been a while for both of us.

'Come, John', Sherlock calls me gently, heading towards an isolated bookcase at the corner of the room. I'm surprised to see it swing back like a concealed door, and the sumptuous interiors of a bathroom in marble and gold just beyond.

I follow Sherlock only to witness the next disaster, it seems. I allow my weary body to slump against the door frame, only barely hanging onto Sheeri and the world beyond.

In the bathtub, the grey tinged body of an older woman, immerged in a thick, oily bubble bath. The odd element out is a hairdryer still plugged in to the mains electricity; electric appliances make notoriously bad rubber ducks.

'Hold it', I grab Sherlock before he goes forward. 'That water is still live, possibly.'

'Hardly, John, it will have short-circuited the fuse. Hence why the only light in here and next door comes from the windows. The electrics are down.'

'Take no chances', I demand.

'How am I supposed to do my job if—'

He stops short as he glances at me and catches right of my worry lined face. I see the fight leaving his too thin, too wiry body at once.

As for me, I'm trying not to have the meltdown of a lifetime. _I missed this Sherlock._ Who is fulfilling _his_ _life's destiny_. The one job that is so natural to him. He invented the job. He's the one and only in the world.

We're going back to the start.

Not unblemished, that's for sure, but we're full of hope and faith in a future we can love or hate on our own terms.

'John', he comes to support me at once, as my strengths fail me. 'You should take a seat. Somewhere safe.'

Out of breath, I still manage to scoff. _Safe? When did I ever choose safe?_

Sherlock firmly plants me on a posh velvet chair facing the grim bathtub. He glances over his shoulder. I nod. Go be Sherlock Holmes. Nothing could ever feel more healing to me right now.

'Intimacy again, John', he states without moving a muscle further than cranking his neck towards the murder victim. His deep voice is quiet and satiated as he speaks.

'She didn't find it strange to have a visitor while she was bathing. A husband or lover?' I say.

'Someone close to her, indeed. And to the man next door. In a dwelling of dozens of bedrooms and bathrooms, it is pertinent that two out the Three were together.'

'She's part of the triumvirate?'

I gulp as I realise I said it out loud within Sheeri's earshot. I wouldn't make it past another Reintegration Camp. But perhaps he are already past all that. Something changed irrevocably. A regime is falling.

'Yes, John. The most powerful Three in the land have been culled to One. And I have one suspect alone for the crimes. Motive, opportunity. Any garden variety detective could pinpoint the killer to the most dangerous man in the land, the one who believes he's above law itself.'

I can almost hear the audience's tight whispers on the other side of the screen. Sherlock still has his magician act. His abandoned mind palace being rebuilt to former splendour as we speak. That beautiful mind tuned in to high speed, gears turning, engine churning, staccato clanking over the reliable rails, and whistling along the beautiful melodies of his music.

'That was fantastic. Really, Sherlock. Truly fantastic.'

'Do not overdo it, John', he snaps, aloof, but his warm eyes betray fondness towards me.

'Sherlock, help me up, please.'

'John?' A tiny wrinkle of worry settles between his eyebrows, intensifying the green hued of his alien eyes.

'I'm alright. I'm more than alright. I can rest later. Now we need to bring justice down on a murderer who has the crown jewels in his possession. And we need to teach him a lesson or two.'

I swear Sherlock is about to say something about the jewels being polished glass, but he seems to have understood by now that _it_ _doesn't_ _matter_. Whatever they may actually be made of, to be settled definitely by a sophisticated mass spectrometer, they are part of the core of an indomitable nation. They are its very heart. They are to be ceremonially used by the Queen, but belong to us all, at the heart of London. Preferably behind half an inch thick, shatter proof glass.

We carry Sheeri again, she has served us well, not in the least to clear us from the crimes already committed by others. Used to broadcast Sherlock Holmes greatest comeback and announcing the change in everyday's life as we know it.

A dark hour still ahead of us.

_**.**_

We walk in circles, through endless corridors and stairs, and I wonder if we lost the audience already. Still clinging on to Sheeri as a recording and broadcasting devise, an electronic voice to witness our actions and motives. A couple of times my strengths have completely deserted me, and but for the faithful intervention of my best friend I would have fallen flat on my face. My heart beats steady but tiredly.

Finally we seem to find it. The heart of the vast monument to the land. A big reception room, full of mirrors, crystals and inlaid gold on the walls, frescoes on the ceiling, and centred by a long business table and periodically arranged chairs. The surface of the table is barren, and slick, reflecting the pools of light in the room. One dark silhouette is cast as a dark pool, a black hole among the scintillating night sky landscape. I look on up. A heavily built man is sat placidly at the end of the long table. His features are hard to define as he's extremely commonplace. He could be me, or some other bloke in a suit. Perhaps that's what he is, a mash up of all of us, an indistinguishable monster compiled from the worse of all of us, our fears and vanities.

'I'm here to kill you' is Sherlock's opening bid.

'Sherlock!' I protest, rolling my eyes.

'What?' he furrows his nose at me.

'He's not your newest archenemy, you know?'

'John, he directed a campaign that physically debilitated and almost killed you, he designed camps that tortured and changed you because you thought differently to the established norm, he destroyed the only home you and I ever loved and felt safe in. What do you expect me to do?'

'Put him in jail, let the courts decide over his actions. He has the right to a fair trial and to defend himself. This is still the United Kingdom. I do not do harm to avenge harm. We're better than that.'

Sherlock smiles and the aim in the gun wavers. I'm still his moral compass, I'm still John Watson.

But, honest, it doesn't mean I don't want revenge on what he's put Sherlock through.

The man clears his throat and fakes a smile.

'You all dither and backtrack. _I make the though calls no one wants to make_. I made us something to be proud of, no matter the cost. And you? A bunch of peace loving cowards?'

Sherlock's haw locks audibly. 'No one calls John a coward', he says through gritted teeth.

'Who would stop me? I have the power, I make the laws and I even have the crown jewels!'

He laughs, a chuckled maniacal laugh of vaudeville villains, as he dons the symbols of power like a party hat.

I feel a wave of nausea hit me as I witness this. Sheeri is but a powerless spectator, just like us.

'You really shouldn't have done that', Sherlock comments, the same anger lacing his words.

'Can you stop me?'

Sherlock looks away. The man gloats:

'In that case I'll shoot first, shall I?' he quickly backs his words by bringing a gun up and the bright spark of light and acrid smoke of deflagrated gunpowder fill the room, thundering under the gun's multiple echoes.

I hit the cold marble floor, Sherlock covering almost my every inch with his body, trying to protect my life. His fingers clawing at my forearms for perchance and reassurance.

Another shot is fired, the room nearly dissolves into darkness as my consciousness wavers.

'Great plan, Sherlock!' a sarcastic voice carries over. 'And you too, John!'

The detective's hold on me lessens fractionally as we both squirm on the cold floor to realise we're alright, and look at the newcomers. Dozens of men and women flock to the room, making it appear rather crammed all if a sudden. Some spectators step back to make way for the young woman arriving, hot gun still cocked, very blasé. _Molly_ _Hooper_.

No one ever thinks her frightening. Their mistake. No one knows so many ways of killing people without leaving an identifiable trace as a pathologist. And this one is packing heat and leading the other 83 or over renegades from our side. We found strength in numbers.

'John?'

Sherlock is suddenly kneeling by my side, his strong but gentle hand splayed in my chest, monitoring my signs of life. I cover his hand with mine, my fingertips resting over his pulse, in turn.

Our hearts still beat. Strong. United.

_**.**_

These days things are so very different from the oppressive nightmare we were trapped in. Things have yet to be back to where they were, divided factions are still fighting for protagonist, and a young democracy is vulnerable but bravely marching on. As long as we keep dialogue open, and hear the words of our opponents, I have faith in the future.

As I listen to what I disagree, I learn new points of view. In the end I may stick to my guns, but I understand my neighbour better, and see him as human.

No more Reintegration Camps. They have been converted into historical museums.

No more the previous copious amounts of cctv cameras, although some remain unchallenged, like bus lane traffic cameras.

Lots of Sheeris got recycled. Some have been reprogrammed to support teaching in schools and hospitals due to their educational capability. Mostly the camera and microphone got disabled. No one is allowed to be listening in on the other side, judging you, so I guess that's alright for now. We will keep watch.

But those are realities outside 221B and they linger in the back of our minds because they are unforgettable. So Sherlock and I just know to enjoy our return to Baker Street, from which we believed we had been exiled forever.

'John, you must rest. You died, John!' Sherlock is near frantic again as he sees me pacing the living room. He worries a lot.

'Well, so did you! Snap, Sherlock. So died too once.'

He stops short, a playful smile tugging at his lips.

'You are never going to let that die down, are you?'

'Not while it suits me, no.'

He tilts his head, his features softening, but still looking haunted, haggard.

'I came back, John.'

I nod. _So did I._

'For you, John', he adds.

_Same here._

'Don't say that to Mycroft, he still thinks he was the one getting you back, for some reason.'

'I was making my way back, just ask Anderson.'

'Anderson? The forensic tech? That Anderson?'

I'm moving to fill the kettle (and get some cake; Mycroft still bakes, he's pondering going on a televised competition of great bakers, I believe). Sherlock nearly jumps off his seat to help me along. It still feels weird, having my flatmate so solicitous. At least I know he won't be poisoning me anytime soon, unless it's vitamins. Wouldn't put that past Sherlock, he never really understood what was morally wrong about it.

The doorbell rings, downstairs. Mrs Hudson singsongs "Coming!" on her way to the front door. Upstairs we look at each other and smile.

'_Client.'_

Feels like the good old days again and we heal by being Sherlock and John.

_**.**_


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Silly, short and light, I'm sure. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'Hi, John. Please meet John.'

'_Sherlock! _What did I tell you about animal testing?'

'That you would not stand for cruel mistreatment of animals for the advancement of my own scientific research. You then launched on to a series of breeches to your rule that, as a doctor, you had to concur had greatly advanced medicine and saved more lives, potentially, than it took.' He snapped his eyes up, straight at me. 'Or maybe you said something about mouldy potatoes in the bathtub. It's really a blur, all your nagging.'

'Sherlock...' I warn, lowering my voice to dangerous levels.

'Just kidding, John. I am sufficiently convinced this lab rat – _John_ – will not be harmed in any way. In fact, I've grown quite attached to little John, and I wouldn't dream of having any harm come to him.'

'Little John?' I repeat his words.

'We must make sure to avoid confusion in any way. How awkward would that be for you?'

I glare at my friend, because I know what will soon come; some witty remark about my size. _"You are both small, John!" _or _"No, I meant the one who squeaks the more when he's afraid of something, but I see where you'd be confused, Lestrade!"_

I sigh deeply to the critiques I haven't received yet. It's not being insecure, it's being prepared beforehand. As much as you ever can with the unpredictable Sherlock Holmes.

The detective can be relentlessly acerbic. Usually he doesn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings. Lestrade argues Sherlock wouldn't even notice he had hurt someone's feelings, even if he had intended so; but that would be disingenuous and I know better. No, Sherlock still fires witty remarks when he is feeling vulnerable. Like a 5 year old, he can make a mess of his social attempts.

I lean over to the metal cage on the kitchen table. The small, nervous, furry creature comes innocently to the bars separating us – _get me outta here, John! he's a mad scientist!_ – and blinks those reddish eyes at me, as his whole body trembles in fear and trepidation, his whiskers vibrating at warp speed to sense me – _please will you save me?_

'Alright. You've got a lab rat, Sherlock. _Why?_'

Sherlock smirks to himself, as if he's just won an invisible battle.

'I'm sending John to the Moon.'

'_What?'_

Okay, so maybe I did _squeak_ there, but– seriously?

The detective ponders, cold and reasonable:

'I'm building a rocket to send John, the Magnificent Rodent, to the Moon.'

'No, you're not.' I assure my friend.

'Yes, I am.' He says, as nothing out of the ordinary.

'You're really not, mate.' And, amused, I cross my arms in front of me.

'Do not fret, John. Your turn will come, when I'm sure it's safe enough and I can dispense of you for the required length of time.'

Alright. He's succeeded. Not at winning the argument, no. At leaving me speechless.

I watch him lift the cage off the table and carefully carry it on to the living room, full of precautions and in the gentlest of manners. He gets a measuring tape out of his pocket and rolls it out, taking a quick mental note of John's size from the tip of the nose to tip of the tail.

'Did you just give him a piece of cheese out of your dressing gown's pocket?' I challenge at once.

'So what if I had? Rodents like cheese, John. Doesn't take a genius to know that.'

I smile to his back. 'It's kind. You like him.'

'Nonsense, John, I'm not kind! Ask the media!'

'And unsanitary too. Your dressing gown will stink of stale cheese, if it doesn't already! Mrs Hudson will throw it away, you know, in one of her biohazard bags.'

'She will not! I know for a fact that she likes John. She adores him. She might even like _you_...'

'Very funny', I mutter tiredly. He brings the cage back to the kitchen table, setting it down carefully. Less than attentively he then grabs an electric screwdriver from under the sink. And a blow torch as an afterthought too. 'Sherlock', I start again, more loudly, 'you can't have a pet rat.' Especially not when he contemplates a blowtorch as an essential everyday tool.

'John, I believe you are jealous. Fear not, you are still my favourite. I will warn you, though, that little John is quickly gaining ground.' And with that he rolls the dividing doors from the kitchen to the living room, keeping me out. I stand there, shocked, facing the coloured frosted glass panels.

I shake my head and look over at the new Baker Street resident. I wonder where Sherlock found him. I'm hoping it wasn't lurching in the bins outside. Nah, of course not. Sherlock wouldn't know of the bin's menial existence. Molly? She works in a teaching hospital, after all, but she usually handles the mortuary and this fellow is quite bright eyed. Who, then? Was he found at a crime scene, nibbling at a corpse? Oh, you poor thing, are you in witness protection with Sherlock Holmes?

'Come here, little one', I whisper softly as I open the cage and slip my hand inside to scoop out the scared little creature. He's a feisty fellow, who immediately searches for adventure, trying to wriggle his way out of my grip.

The rat only settles somewhat when he gets a comfortable seat on my jumper's folds and I feed him crumbly bits of cheese. He's so eager he mistakenly bites my fingertip. I hiss and shake my hand to ease the pain.

That's when Sherlock apparently decides to storm back into the kitchen, sliding the glass doors open. One look at the both of us – a glimpse in the case of little John, who terrified by the racket burrows into my jumper – and the detective freezes on the spot.

'What?' I protest. 'Did you come back to tell me he's carrying the _Yersinia_ _pestis_ bacteria responsible for the plague? Because he's just bitten me, I'd like to know with advancement so I can put my affairs in order...'

'Oh, your affairs are perfectly in order now', Sherlock dismisses easily. He ignores my squint as how he would know that, in order to carry on: 'John, John has grown too big to fit the rocket!'

'Wait, you actually built one?'

'Yes, of course. Been working on it for weeks! But John here – unlike you I may add – has grown too big!' he finishes with the most preposterous accusation to the small creature.

'Good', I settle on. 'He wasn't going anyway.'

'Wasn't going?' Sherlock glares at me.

'No.'

'Why would you state such an inaccurate thing?'

'For various reasons, and I'm not a veterinarian, but mostly because John is pregnant and about to have a nice healthy litter of little Johns. He is a she, Sherlock. A pregnant she-rat.'

'Oh.' He blinks, taking in the challenge. 'Should I build a family-size rocket?'

'Not while the young ones are just pups.'

'And to board a rocket with a mischief of rats would take up a lot of space needed for my sub-experiments... Oh, why did I name her _John_? I should have known I'd be asking for trouble. You are trouble, John! And I mean you, the human!' he huffs, pacing the small kitchen.

I smile softly. I knew I could bring Sherlock round to seeing things my way. I return she-John to the cage and gently close the wire mesh once more.

'Now, seriously... where did you get this lab rat, mate?'

'Crime scene, of course!'

I glance at my bit finger, transferable diseases and all. He smirks as he reads my expression.

'Not to worry, John, she was set free from a lifelong imprisonment as the control subject of a murderous scientist that had a good work-home life separation and used a gun instead of the intriguing array of murder weapons available. John was homeless and most assuredly surplus. Even you must admit it's cruel, John. Giving her life to science and not actually being a part of it?'

'So—' I think it through. 'We've got a new pet?'

Sherlock's eyes narrow as he fixates on the cage. I look on, it's seemingly empty now.

'Did you secure the dodgy lock on that?'

'Nooo...' _Only thought of telling me that now?_

'Ah.' Sherlock concludes, with a shoulder shrug. 'I'm sure she'll visit.'

Frantic, I try to look under the table and behind the laboratory glassware.

'Mrs Hudson will never forgive you!' I warn.

'Just drop it, John. We all know you did that on purpose. You really need to work on your jealousy, you love being my sole attention focus.'

I chuckle, getting up from squatting on the ground. Really? I think Sherlock just admitted something here. He'll never live this down, if I can help it.

'So what fuel were you planning on using for your rocket?'

We soon fall into a companiable scientific discussion that carries on through the evening, sat by the fireplace.

_**.**_


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: Feels just like the old collection. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'Please let me outta here.'

My voice comes across detached, numbed, empty. Sherlock stops clawing at the stalled lift doors, that he was uselessly trying to pry open with his bare hands out of frustration. We've been stuck in the New Scotland Yard's rarely used lift for ten minutes, according to my wristwatch.

Could have been more than 12 hours, or even a day, the fresh doubt settles in my head.

No, of course not. Sherlock and I took the lift to go down to the rarely visited Evidence Room. The detective was on hot pursuit of a nefarious people trafficker. What he didn't quite account for was the lift with the "Out of Order" sign stuck to the doors was actually... out of order.

_Not every piece of evidence is significant, and not every hastily put together sign is a decoy to avoid our petty criminal acts, Sherlock._

My friend grabbed the piece of paper before I spotted it, pressed the call button, the lift opened the doors, all lights were on, match point for Sherlock Holmes.

We could have taken the stairs, but _no._ Had to get there quicker.

And once we had retrieved illegally the evidence from aisle 7, shelf 2, code 133-09-2019, getting out of a building swarming with cops became the priority. Or maybe Sherlock forgot the ripped off sign, who knows. It's too mundane for the spoiled detective, I suppose.

The lift responded to the buttons Sherlock pressed as we stepped inside. Closed its metallic coffin doors on us. Started the ride with a jolt. Halted suddenly with a bigger jolt. The lights went off. The metal screeched to a halt. The control panel then burst into electric sparks. Sherlock grabbed me, pulling me well away. Then the whole cabin suddenly dropped ten inches in a menacing drastic threat. Halted under the sound of a steel cable whiplashing freely against the lift shaft walls – oddly reminiscent of electric storm lightening as the tense, coiled power is unleashed too quickly. Sherlock grabbed my arm harder, I may have been struggling. I stilled in the dark as the smell of burnt wires filled the cabinet, tickling my throat.

I clear my throat at the recollection. The terrible scent has dissipated somewhat since. The darkness has been replaced by my phone's torch light, casting ominous shadows on us from below, as if we were in a modern campfire of sorts (our imprisonment being the scary story by the fire).

'John? Are you alright, John?'

I chuckle, comes across slightly high pitched and much too strained.

'Just peachy, mate.'

His comeback is delayed and controlled when it finally comes: 'Glad to hear that, John.'

'And the doors?' Again, too much emotion in my voice. I try to gulp it down my parched throat.

'I haven't given up yet, John. And someone will come for us.'

'No one knows we're here', I disagree.

'A defect in the lift will have alerted security.'

'They'll think it was whatever fault there was before causing it. Sherlock, _why_ did we had to take the lift?'

This time he has no answer. That, in itself, makes me the more concerned.

'John, what's wrong?' Sherlock's voice pierces our small world of lights and shadows.

'Nothing.'

'Your left hand is trembling again.'

'Maybe I just want to punch the doors, ever thought of that?'

'Useless, but be my guest.'

I sigh and do no such thing, hanging my head and willing my blood to flow to my extremities. Cold hands, cold feet, shallow breathing, heavy feeling of impending doom, it's like I'm on the verge of some panic attack. I pinch my nose, closing my eyes hard. Why on earth would I be terrified of broken lifts? It's inconvenient, not half as insane as that time the army convoy got flipped over by a roadside IED and I got trapped under the metal carcass of a several tons vehicle, tires burning lazily filling the inside with unbreathable swirling smoke and—

I shake my head violently. I made it out. I'm in London now.

My right leg buckles under me and it's by Sherlock's instinctive reaction of grabbing hold of me that I don't crash down.

'John, what's the matter?'

I can hear the concern in his voice, one he won't bother concealing. Also some impatience, because I'm not disclosing what he cannot quite grasp. But it's the concern that marks me. Either he gives up his usual play of distance for an audience or he doesn't think a lot of the current happenings will stick in a panic overridden mind like mine. He's got a point. Memories are often patchy during panic attacks, and that's why I most certainly am refusing to take a plunge in one just now.

Sherlock is confused, I can tell, as doctor Watson emerges and calmly covers Sherlock's hand with his, assuring: 'All gone now. Am fine.'

He seems taken back, one imperious eyebrow shooting up in his forehead in defiance, but he won't contradict me.

'Good. And just so you know, there's plenty of air in here, John. You have recently eaten and I had two humbugs, the temperature is likely to rise and not drop so we can remove the extra clothes layers as required. We'll give Lestrade as much time as he requires to deduce our whereabouts and come release us from captivity.'

'Yes. Yes, of course.' _Stop deducing this will take so long, will you? You're Sherlock Holmes, you're always right._

I let my sweaty back lean against the back wall of the tiny lift – are the walls crushing in on us like the movies? is this box becoming smaller by the minute? – and from there I allow myself to slide down to the ground, where I find a secure, solid place on the floor. I'm rubbing my throbbing leg in circles when I ask out loud:

'Still no network on our phones?'

'No, John. I believe it's standard protocol inside and in the immediate vicinity of the evidence room. It helps eliminate the unwanted publication of evidence regarding ongoing cases.'

'Which is exactly what we came down here for', I accuse.

'Great, John, you're finally catching up.'

'Funny', I accuse sarcastically. I take as deep breath as my oddly bruised sternum allows me. It feels it doesn't quite inflate my lungs. Useless air, useless breathing, my body is shutting down. Too much smoke. Pained gasps. I need to go help the hurt soldiers. Snap out of it, Watson! You can smell the sand that the hot drafts of burnt rubber smoke drag to your parched mouth. The moans are dying out. Night is falling, plunging you into darkness. No one will come, you know no one ever comes. You know—

'_John!'_

I snap my eyes open, the diffuse light in the lift piercing my retinas with uncalled for pain. Right, panic attack. Just another symptom. Breathe right, wiggle your toes, focus on the here and now. Sherlock is here. You are safe.

Only now I realise Sherlock has taken off his coat, balled it negligently, and stashed it behind my back, propping me to a seating position. I've been sliding across the disgusting square of floor.

'John', he repeats my name, trailing his deep honest eyes into mine. 'Stay with me.'

'I'm alright now.'

Still he won't believe me. Instead he shuffles from a squatting position almost in front of me to a seating one, comfortable stance at my side. We're now both staring at the useless metal doors. I can just about tell imprints of Sherlock's fists, where they banged the surface, his anger righteously defending me.

'I didn't mean for this interlude in the investigation, John.'

He means, _I'm sorry, John._

'I know. It's not all your fault. I'm not angry at you. I'm mostly angry at me, if I'm honest.' I turn my head to face his profile. At once he moves his head to face me straight on. _Don't be silly, John._

'How's the battle going?'

I skip a beat. Does he know about Afghanistan, so real to me right now? Does he mean the panic attack he can't have missed? I focus instead on the fact that he called it the Battle. Even if I lose the battle, I won't lose the War, is implied.

'It's...' I sigh. _I don't know._

'Will it help if I—'

He hesitates as if he's about to do something so uncharacteristic that is totally foreign to him, that he needs to stop and input directives on the use of each arm muscle; contracting, extending, circling me. Slowly, assuring himself and me that I can extricate myself if I choose to.

It's an awkward hug, a sideways hug. A well-meant but overthought hug. But I'm John Watson. This I know how to do.

I snuggle closer, leaning my head to his collarbone, marvelling at how well our height difference serves us now. He instinctively crosses his arm around my waist, pinning me in. I should feel constricted, trapped, fighting the remnants of a near panic attack. Instead I give in to my deep exhaustion, close my eyes and focus on his steady heartbeats. His hold becomes natural, willing, friendly, protective. I'm getting sleepy, very sleepy.

That's typical of people who experience panic attacks, actually. The crash.

'Shh. Don't overthink, John. Just drop it, John, let it go. I've got you', he whispers, knowing just what to say.

'I'm alright now', I say; and it's finally true. I'm now better than alright. 'Lemme know when they come open the doors', I beg, no more than a whisper.

'Of course, John.'

_**.**_

'It was positively tedious, Lestrade! John even fell asleep! You took _ages_ before you got us out of that lift! A lift that is the property of Scotland Yard, I may add. Is this how you treat all your consultants?' Sherlock elaborates in overproduced tirades, gesticulating wildly in the patient DI's office.

'No, just the annoying ones. The ones that won't follow the rules and ignore Out of Order signs', Lestrade sustains easily.

'You don't deserve the four cases I solved while we were bored out of our minds, trapped in a faulty metal box!'

Greg frowns altogether, much more engaged all of a sudden.

'How many case evidence boxes did you go through?'

'Just the one', Sherlock assures, tapping his phone. 'The other two cases are from the first boxes I consulted erroneously, codes 134 and 143.' He dramatically opens his Drafts and hits Send on his phone. Greg's phone chirps happily in reply. The detective just sent over the case deductions.

'And the fourth case?' Greg asks, still perplexed.

Sherlock glances at the friend he hugged, before alleging: 'I miscounted. Three should be enough to keep you busy for now, inspector.'

'Yeah, of course. Need a ride home? I've got the keys to one of the Yard's van, my car is in the shop.'

Sherlock eyes narrow as he takes in my blanching, across the tiny room.

'We'll walk, Lestrade.'

'But it's cold and rainy outside.'

I smirk. 'Positively cheerful weather tonight', I assure both my friends. 'I love British weather.'

Cold and rainy will do me just fine tonight.

_**.**_


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: I had some more lab rat plot lurking about. They're much too cute. (And I had no better ideas. Too much work, here in real life, I'm drained. I'll try something cleverer next time.) -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

In the dark familiar bedroom I wake up with a start. Before I check myself my hand already roams under my pillow for my service gun. I shake my head to disperse some of the confusion, wondering what triggered the cold sweats and rapid shallow breathing this time.

Sherlock is a likely cause. Sometimes he wakes me with explosions from his expanded chemistry set. Other times he's practising indoor shooting (safely wearing ear defenders and aiming at a black silhouette paper target). There's the odd event where the fire alarm blares suddenly and as I reach the downstairs landing Sherlock has already concealed the cause of the commotion; and he won't ever tell me.

When the insomniac detective exquisitely flows through Bach's symphonies, though, that's the one occasion I don't wake up; no matter how badly I've been sleeping of late. Mrs Hudson will tell me all about it in the morning, as she laments the ungodly hours her tenant gets up to playing the violin.

Tonight it's something else entirely.

There's a droning, persistent noise drifting through the stairwell. Anxiety taking over my senses now, I get up summarily and lower my bare feet to the cold wooden floor. I pad across the room virtually silently, but not before I grab my gun anyway, as an afterthought. Better take precautions. Nothing is granted in Baker Street. I hear no intruder fight noise, no daring robber or avenging murderer by proxy. No Mycroft Holmes – he will visit at odd hours as easily as in broad daylight, proving that insomniac streak runs in the family. Or maybe just to convince me he's not a vampire in disguise. I wouldn't put it past Mycroft, he does love to be dramatic.

The raspy noise grates at my nerves. Low, mechanic, industrious. I carefully climb down each step without bothering to turn on the lights. The moonlight drifts through the stained glass window to the stairwell, casting cut out shadows of cobalt blue and malachite green on the worn steps.

There's a soft glowing light coming from the living room. The door just slightly open, allowing the warm glare to permeate through the cold darkness.

I push the door open without calling out my friend. Feeling curious, but also reassured as absolute calm and tranquillity seems to reign in the first glimpse I get of the room.

Suddenly something sharp zooms past my eyes and I instinctively I step back, knocking me out of balance. I crash on the landing, no hope left of spying surreptitiously on my mad friend.

'John?'

Sherlock comes to the door, pulling it open, looking me on the ground with confusion.

'You could have come in', he decides on, shrugging and turning back to the room.

'Sherlock, it's the middle of the night!'

'Your presence never bothers me, John.'

_Wait, that's not—_

'No, I mean—' I sigh, knowing it's hopeless. 'What are you doing?'

He smirks as a small hint of victory but otherwise gestures at my chair. The strange flying blur still zooms about the room. I squint at what turns out to be a biplane model with a functioning motor and the control box is in Sherlock's hands.

I'm about to ask for information when the thing swerves sharply, dives its nose and heads towards me. I duck just in time.

'Sherlock, is that... Sherlock, what did you put inside that flying machine?' I demand an answer, thunderous.

'That's John II, my new rescue lab rat.'

'Do you call this a rescue? The poor creature inside it is probably praying to go back to an infectious diseases laboratory by now! Sherlock Holmes, land that toy airplane right now!'

The genius and mad scientist with the skewed ethics rolls his eyes but carefully bites his lip as he manoeuvres the commands to a perfect 10 points landing on the rug.

I rush towards the innocent captive animal inside. I'm relieved to see him sniffling around him in curiosity, with absolutely no ill effects from his adventure.

'I've trained him, John. Obviously. Little John is most able to board a flying device without suffering ill effects. In fact, I believe he positively loves flying.'

'How do you know that?'

'He twitches his whiskers.'

'Sherlock, he's a rat. He'll do that all the time regardless of the setting...' I take a deep breath and try to organise my thoughts and emotions. 'Why?' I ask, point blank, depleted by Sherlock's shenanigans.

'We've been through this before, John. You were unavailable, not to mention the size difference.'

'Sherlock...' I warn him with a growl.

'Take a seat, John', he invites me up the red armchair. 'Your bare feet must be cold by now, that always makes you cranky.'

I obey, stiffly, still waiting on those explanations.

'The last lab rat, you wanted to send her to the Moon', I lead him on. _No, I haven't forgotten that._

'Baby steps.'

Sherlock fiddles again with the commands in his hands. I'm up in a flash, trying to stop him, but too late. The poor rat is again flying the fantastic machine.

'Sherlock, cut it out!'

The detective's cold grey eyes narrow and he brusquely raises the plane's nose, causing a tight loop on itself. I jump forward with my hands reaching out to catch the poor creature falling from the seat but in a burst of white fabric a bunched up ball of fabric bursts forth, immediately assuming the shape of a parachute, slowing John's fall.

There's a ruddy miniscule backpack tied to John's back. He hangs limply, sniffling the air around him as he glides down slowly to my outstretched hands_. _Frantic and frightened half to death but not harmed.

'Sherlock, you can't do this!'

'Clearly not. John does not partake on either your bravery or your need for adrenaline.'

Sherlock, ever so gently, returns the rat to a spacious cage on the coffee table. It has a hamster wheel and plenty of food and water. The little thing shrieks away to the corner, one red eye alert and studying us.

'John, he might partake in your PTSD. Remind me, how did you get over it?'

I glare at the detective, recover the rat and gently hold the little one to my jumper, settling him.

'Sherlock, you don't understand John at all', I declare, dignified, before I walk off.

_**.**_

Long day at the surgery. Seems like all mothers with runny nose toddlers have concerted their efforts to persuade me their children are possibly suffering from the most tragic illnesses and will not accept their bright sparks may be victims to the common cold.

I'm achy, tired and cold as I walk the short distance between the tube station and 221B.

What I certainly didn't expect was to arrive home to find a gigantic maze built on the living room floor, and expanded to the landing and stairs. The top of the boxed labyrinth is Plexiglas and see through. There's only but a short gap to the banister, allowing me safe passage to 221B. 'Sherlock?' I call. Nothing. 'Sherlock!'

'It's an escape room, John!' The detective materialises himself by my side, coming down the steps from the upper floor. The biplane is haphazardly parked on the third step. 'I'm trying to teach John, _this_ _John_, to escape, by providing enough stimulus measures to encore him to do just that', Sherlock relays. 'Positive stimuli, John. By the way, we are out of cheese.'

'Yeah. How's that training working for you?' I ask, sarcastic.

'Slow and with great difficulty. John, you are a slow learner', he sentences before walking past me to Mrs Hudson or outside. I have to swerve out if the way in an unprecedented act of contortion. Belatedly I notice he's got his long coat on.

_Was that John the rat or John the human he meant?_

_Have I been left babysitting a rat?_

And what was Sherlock doing in my room?

_**.**_

A nice invigorating shower was all I needed to feel human again. Stretching my back and drinking my neck, I take a balled up bunch of dirty clothes for the laundry basket. Nothing could be more mundane, I suspect, and so when I actually drop the lid on musty towels and old shirts it's a surprise I spot the thing out.

'Sherlock! Your rat is in my dirty jumper!'

After a couple of seconds of absolute silence, suddenly there's a rush of noise and movement from a frantic flatmate heading over.

Absolutely blasé, I open the bathroom door and wait collectedly for the genius arrival.

Sherlock is genuinely concerned and relieved as he scoops up the tiny animal in his hands, bringing him to his cheek – and the furry creature affectionately sniffs his pale skin.

'There you were, you idiot!' there's no edge to his name calling of what has become his new pet. _I mean, pet._ 'I thought I'd lost you. Never leave, John. I'll do anything.'

'Sherlock, hmm', I need to warn him I'm in earshot, _no matter the goldmine_, 'you know he doesn't speak English.'

'No. He might learn to understand it though. Do not sell him short. John is cleverer than he seems.'

'Except he got lost inside the laundry basket', I state drily.

'Clearly he was ready to brave the waters next, having explored the skies and the land. I commend his bravery but do not condone wash cycles, obviously. John is prone to getting himself over his head in danger', he concludes with a responsibility laden sigh.

'John was actually enjoying a kip in my jumper. Maybe he likes jumpers.'

'Just drop it, John. Stop trying to make him like you, John. There's no need to get jealous, John.'

I sigh and roll my eyes.

_I'm not the one that, feeling lonely or bored, has been caught transferring feelings to a pet rat._

'Sherlock, what's that in your pocket?' A strange twitch animates his dressing gown's pocket.

He gulps.

I stare.

He looks guilty.

I gulp.

_There are other pet rats about._

_All named John, I bet._

'I couldn't just leave them behind, could I? No one wanted them, they didn't have a home! I'm trying to keep them happy, but what do I know about rats? They are as big a mystery as you!

My face twitches in a smile.

Most genuine thing he's told me all day.

I can help. I like the little chaps too. And Sherlock is right; everyone deserves a loving home.

I guess it's my turn to get the cheese.

_**.**_


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: Found this start in an old notebook._

_I've been away for a while, because I'm exhausted by work these days, and have no words left. It should get better as I find my rhythm. Might post slower though. -csf_

* * *

_**1.**_

The softest, most careful and tentative touch on my shoulder rouses me from deep slumber. Given my personal history as a soldier in an active warfront, it's not much surprise to any of the two of us that I come back to with a start and halfway through a raised fist. Then I blink and the rest of Sherlock's familiar contours come though the thick haze in my mind, reassuring me instantly. My tight fist melts and my arm lowers before I can gather words to speak out loud.

It's only my mad friend, waking me up in the middle of the night, gently guarding himself against my explosive reflexes.

He doesn't seem at all troubled by my reaction. In fact, he expected it, as proven by his reasonable precautions. No, if anything I sense he is guarded, but not as someone would predictably steal themselves from danger or the volatile outbursts of a disoriented soldier. My friend keeps his movements contained and close to his body, making himself small, trying not to startle me, worrying about the toll it takes on me.

It's an instant and perilous journey back from the Afghan war to the familiar London and Sherlock always waits tensely for that spark of recognition in my eyes, followed closely by a hint of confusion and subsequent shame, proof beyond doubt that I made it back once again. That I'm the John Watson he knows once again.

Complicit, as if reading my mind's inner works, Sherlock finally lowers a calm hand on the duvet over my leg, in his instinctive familiarity that never feels wrong when it comes from Sherlock, and he leans forward, raptured expression and wide eyes stuck on mine.

'Good night, John', he tells me, very serious.

'Wha— What?' I blink, tiredly. Why am I so foggy? Have I not slept at all? Or have I overslept too much?

Has he put something in my coffee again?

'I'd say "good morning" to you', Sherlock elaborates, 'but it'd hardly be accurate. It's the middle of the night, John, you were fast asleep, and I'm willing to pretend I did not see you drooling slightly over your pillow', he adds magnanimously. 'Most of all, know that we are safe and no immediate harm should befall on us.'

I blink again. Good to know.

Sounds a bit fake, when laid out like that though.

'Are you hurt, Sherlock?'

Did one of Sherlock's science experiments go horribly wrong? Is he in need of medical attention? Is that it?

I raise myself on my elbows, breathing shallow and fast.

'I am well, John. Why would you ask me that?' he grimaces in distaste.

'I don't know. Force of habit?' I say, sheepishly. Then, raising myself some more from my creased bedsheets, I conclude: 'So, huh, case then?'

He came to collect me, he needs me at a particularly gruesome crime scene, the type that usually cannot wait.

Sherlock shakes his head briefly.

'None that cannot wait for a more civilised time of day.'

'Hmm... Is there a fire?' _I don't know what to think here._

Sherlock looks outraged. 'Obviously not, John! I had the fire extinguisher at hand the whole time!'

I sigh. Good to know.

'Sherlock, why did you wake me up?' I ask patiently to the inordinately shy detective, being cagey. Why are we playing twenty questions?

He clears his throat and focuses those green honest eyes on mine. I gulp dry at their intensity.

'I wanted you awake...'

'Go on', I incentivise, like one would to a small, stuttering child.

'Because the world is going funny.' And he looks around us significantly. But there is only dusk in the familiar room, and I don't get it. I reach out to the bedside table lamp and click it on.

'What do you mean the world is going funny?'

'Time has come to a standstill, John. Come and see for yourself if you don't believe me! I woke up in the middle of the night and everything had stopped. I... I woke you up to make sure you were alright, John. I didn't like seeing you frozen too.'

I can just about make out the genuine shudder that ripples through his thin frame.

'Sherlock, that makes little sense', I warm him. 'Maybe you had a bad dream. Then often feel real enough', I try to parent the adult at my bedside, who has woken me up in search for comfort after "the world stopped".

'John', he calls my name passionately. 'Whenever you rule out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Have I not repeated it times enough?'

I shrug. 'Yeah, I guess, but what does that even mean?'

He smirks. 'It means I don't get it either, but it can't be rebuked as a fact. Come and see for yourself, John. Our reality is under attack. The time continuum has frozen and we must restart it somehow.'

I push the remainders of my bed covers away.

'Maybe we're still asleep, Sherlock? This could be your dream, or mine.'

He nods, not overtly confident, and I step out of the bed and into his odd, fascinating, standstill world.

_**.**_

After a first glimpse out of the window onto the quiet street outside – a couple of cars stopped in the middle of the road, absolute silence as London never really knows, and one solitary passer by playing statue mid step – I insisted on getting dressed for an investigation.

Sherlock found my societal instincts amusing for, as he describes it, there is no proof that anyone else apart from him or those he awakes (he has that power as demonstrated in me) are _really_ living the moment like we are. Seize the day. Carpe diem.

Seize the infinitesimal second, more like it. We are cramming minutes, on our way to hours, in this one glitch of time.

Can't really get over it myself.

Not even as we stand outside, in the freezing middle of the night, staring at a strange man playing statue of himself.

'I say he was drunk', Sherlock cuts my abstractions and shock with the sanctimonious deduction. 'Judging by his clothes, the direction he came from and the drifting whiff of a mix of rums, he came from his 30th birthday celebration at the Zombie Club, after a short and unsatisfying sexual encounter on a side alley with his long life partner.'

'Faithful, huh? That makes a change on your usual grim deductions, mate.'

'Not my fault, humanity can be flawed at times. It is not infrequent to find vices in those who are criminals or who fall victims of serious crimes. But if it helps you restore your cynical faith in society he lied; he's turned 32.'

I smirk at that. Then lose my smirk quickly.

'Sherlock, what if he's trapped like that but he can hear and see all around him?'

'Firstly, John, he's really drunk, I doubt he'd make much sense of our words. Secondly, he can't hear or see us, or interact in any way.'

'How do you know that?' I face him. He faces me.

'It's happened to me before, this time freeze. I guess I'm a bit prone to these glitches', he admits. 'Having your company, John, is a first, though. One I'm enjoying immensely.'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: Be still my beating heart. -csf_

* * *

_**2.**_

The absolute silence of the night is paradoxically getting me on edge. No urban or biological sound permeates the dark night, for all around us is transfixed into a semi permanent freeze-frame. Not even the buzzing of electricity through the cables, or the mechanic gears of winding clocks, no distant cry of birds or flapping winds of bats, no breathing sounds or rustling of clothes but Sherlock and I's. Just white noise, I suppose, with a deafening weight of loneliness and solitude.

It's like we are the only living things on the planet right now.

I just about suppress a shiver with all my willpower. This stillness could slowly drive a man insane.

Sherlock notices my reaction, of course he notices my discomfort, and he at once dramatically twirls his coat around announcing he'll make us some tea! I'd tell him to put in the telly or the radio to kill off the absolute silence, but I don't suspect there's a flow of images and sounds available. Our mundane distractions cut short.

I'm watching my friend make his way back inside 221 Baker Street when I notice a dark huddled something on the cold pavement. Something big, hiding from our notice in the shadows.

What's going on there?

_**.**_

'Sherlock!'

I clear my throat awkwardly as I get back up on the cold night.

'Yes, John?' his familiar voice permeates from inside.

In the absolute silence of London I can hear the distant noises from 221B's kitchen upstairs, travelling the crisp night air with clarity. Seems the detective is struggling with the electric kettle and bumping against chairs.

_It's tea, Sherlock, not rocket science._

_Therein lies the rub for Sherlock, I suppose._

'We seem to have a dead body on our doorstep, mate!' I call out loud, in my army captain voice, loud enough to raise Mrs Hudson – and Mrs Turner next door – from their time suspended sleep. Only they won't, they can't.

There is absolutely nothing, no reply, for a second or two. Then the genius precipitously climbs down the stairs, returning to full view with an excited gleam in his eyes.

'Oh, goodie! A dead body, John!' Sherlock's excitement is full of joy, like a child unwrapping unexpected Christmas gifts.

I'm about to mutter _not good_, look around covertly, clear my throat and look pointedly at my best mate to warn him, _when I realise no one's watching_. That gives carte blanche to my mad friend's unconventional ways. I'm the only audience awake here; and does Sherlock's morbid joy disturb me all that much? Not at all. I won't go as far as to join him in a mini jiggle of a happy dance over the corpse – _yes, he's doing one_ – but I smile benignly as a spectator.

Besides, I know Sherlock is not happy a life has been lost. The detective can't understand mourning a stranger demurely, he thinks it a waste of time and a societal constriction when he could be already applying his deductive powers to the murder.

Most of all, deducing makes him happy. He really loves his work. That he needs to keep an undertaker's sombre attitude is unkind towards his talents, really.

I smile further. I could sense Sherlock was getting bored and so this is a good turn of events. A nice murder to keep Sherlock happy.

'This is most favourable! Ha! John, you are indeed a conductor of light and you will not be a boring addition after all!'

'Ta... I think.'

Sherlock instantly kneels by the body of a thirty-something year old man, sprawled next to the front step of 221 Baker Street.

'Ah, pupils extremely dilated, petechial haemorrhage, this man is indeed dead, John!'

'Yeah. I kinda guessed that. Being a doctor and all.'

Sherlock rolls his eyes, almost ignoring me. 'The stillness state of time suspension is akin to death in many regards. No heart beat as even the most basic autonomous body functions have been suspended, remember? You'd be easily forgiven for assuming death when in fact someone was asleep or caught in a resting position... By the way, I learnt that one the hard way.'

'I'll bet', I comment, stunned. 'But this guy here was poisoned and suffocated in his own vomit before the Big Freeze hit us all. I'm a doctor, I can tell dead people, Sherlock.'

He smirks, complicit.

'John, we seem to have a good turn of events. We have a client and a case. The client and the murder victim are the same, thus sparing me of an obnoxious interview. I may not know why he came to me, but I can easily read through the man's clothes his job as a physicist and by his haircut his desire to keep hidden his passionate interest in Japanese manga, that he kept even from his girlfriend, a former work colleague and clearly not his type even if she fits all his parents' expectations.'

'How can you tell that?' I wonder.

'Haircut, John. He didn't feel comfortable enough to share with her his visit to a manga convention where he appeared in a modified diving suit – note the distinct neoprene chaffing on the wrists – and his hair painted a particular shade of pink – still discernible at the roots, where the dye hasn't quite come off when he washed his hair.'

'That's brilliant, by the way.'

He shrugs. 'I've seen more committed cosplays. Once, there was this—'

'Is that all you can tell me about the victim?' I cut him off.

'Of course not. He recently moved out of his parents' home to live in his own place, you can tell by the lingering scent of wall paint on his clothes and a few splatters on the sole of his left shoe that tell us he's got at least one dark grey wall. Could have been a tester sample, though, keep that in mind!'

'Sherlock, his home decor hardly tells us who murdered him.'

'You never know! John, pick his wallet, we need his address!' he directs at me as he lowers himself on his knees and hands splayed just next to the body, further sniffing it. Then he starts proding it with a finger, testing the stiffness.

I clear my throat. Yeah, right, well, no one's watching. It just ends up making me chuckle. Sherlock is all fired up, as if having a man dead on his doorstep made this weird dream sequence, or alternate reality, or realistic hallucination, all the more interesting.

Sherlock wouldn't be Sherlock if he could ignore a case like this.

Finally the detective gets up, intense gaze at the distance, mulling odds and probabilities, like a dog on a scent.

'Let's go, John!'

I look around again. 'Wait. There's a dead person on the street. Shouldn't we call the police? The morgue?'

'No one to take the call. Time is frozen, have you forgotten?'

'No, but— we can't just leave him like this!'

'No, certainly not', Sherlock assures me solemnly. 'We must get his car and house keys first.'

And he proceeds to pickpocket the dead man.

'Sherlock!' I shriek in frustration.

'What? He won't need them. And no one's watching us. It's for the bigger good. It's to solve a murder and catch the criminal!'

'Well, I guess', I hesitate. 'But it's not very dignified.' I'm not so sure I like this consequence free world; it feels very unruly.

'Oh, and I'm driving, John. I know a couple of shortcuts', he ominously adds.

_**.**_

Sherlock Holmes would make a great race car driver, if we were to enrol in wacky races. The detective takes advantage of our unique circumstances, mounting on pavements, rolling straight over grassed roundabouts, swerving easily as he avoids the few time freeze cars on the roads without slowing down. The client's car is a comfortable but modest model (with a manga character dangling from the rear view mirror) that much like everything that Sherlock commands back to life has responded easily to the ignition key.

I yawn, watching the landscape roll outside. It's the middle of the night after all, and one of us is possibly asleep, perhaps the two of us, and this is but an hyper realistic dream of sorts.

It's the only rational explanation.

The important thing is that Sherlock is not alone. I'll keep my friend safe and make sure we navigate our way out of this twilight zone.

And for that I must not fall back asleep, not yet, not before he does, so he's not alone in this strange world.

As we glance at each other in the silent car ride, Sherlock and I, both intense and protective, we try to imprint confidence in each other.

_**.**_

'Sherlock...' My voice is but a gasped whisper as I look across the windscreen. The engine dies down as the detective removes the ignition key and, cleared of further distractions, my jaw drops at the wonderful view conjured ahead.

Rain. Only it's not the pesky, never-ending England's rain anymore. Clearly defined, thousands if not more, rain droplets hang in the night air ahead of us. Individualized, wholesome, reflecting the light of the streetlamps like fireflies in the great outdoors. Tear shaped, curved and engorged by the gravity's pull underneath, smooth sleek surface, scattered in a random yet balanced pattern around us.

My senses prickle in attention. The rain droplets are not just above us or splattering on the asphalt, they are left, right, above and below eye level, tingling the senses with a pull of fascination and adventure. Rain is no longer a dull, necessary exploit of nature. It's a marvellous play on the senses, as I open the car door – those droplets in the way are obliterated by the metal surface of the car, leaving a clear, void path in their wake – and I step out, rising above the car's height, receiving these cool islands of water on my face, refreshing me.

'John?' Sherlock calls me in his turn, but I'm still having a hard time gathering my wits to such a beautiful natural phenomenon that our slow minds are incapable of apprehending without complex digital aid. Such intricate detail, perfection, purpose and accomplishment rain turns out to be.

'John.' Sherlock's voice is now calm as he joins me outside the vehicle. He seems to have read my stance with his incredible ease and he too is quite pacified by the eerie world outside us.

'Sherlock, this is amazing.'

He nods, strangely hung up on my reactions more than on the iridescent gleam of those suspended water droplets.

'I had quite forgotten the rain', he admits.

Whiplashing my neck I face my friend. His eyes are deep green tonight, I notice as a good omen.

'You mentioned the world has stopped got you, other times before', I recall.

He nods, but comments: '_Stopped_, you say.'

'I'm not sure what to call this insane time suspension, Sherlock.'

'A momentary glitch, John. Nothing to worry about. Time will soon return to it's natural flow, it always does.'

I nod, full of trust. 'When, though?'

'I don't know', he admits. 'Last time this happened I was a child. Eventually I got tired of exploring the world within my reach, and I fell asleep. As I woke up, the world had resumed what is perceived as normality.'

I ponder this magical man slowly. 'Must have been terrifying for a child.'

'Boring', he deflects. Then shrugs. 'Gave me time to study my favourite encyclopaedia and produce foul smelling chemicals; that his, until Mycroft locked away my chemistry set because I kept using it unsupervised even if he kept an eye on me every second of the day. They eventually assumed I suffered from insomnias. Perhaps in a way they were something of the sort...'

'Did you try to tell your brother Mycroft about – _all_ _this_?' I gesture around us.

'Of course. He didn't believe me. My brother is far too rational to entertain the possibility of _this_.'

'And your parents?' He shrugs again. 'A friend?' He smirks derisively.

'I don't believe I had those before you, John. Certainly no one I could visit as I couldn't leave the house without the keys.'

'There are windows and you are resourceful. You'd find your way out.'

'I believe I did', he admits, not very forthcoming. 'Mycroft nearly had a fit the next morning as I wasn't in my room. He deduced I had been kidnapped. They found me asleep on the porch, unharmed. Mycroft never really forgave me for his own incorrect deduction.'

I smile, but it's a sad smile, for the lonely child my genius friend once was. Isolated from his peers, in the knowledge of an absolute miracle and no one believed him. No one to share this with.

'You should have awoken Mycroft. He'd believe if he'd seen this.'

Sherlock's green eyes deepen in thought. Maybe he just didn't think of it as a child. Mycroft was too bossy, too old, too distant, for a young impressionable Sherlock.

'I didn't know you'd wake up, John', he reminds me with a barely concealed shiver. 'I reached out by instinct. I didn't like seeing you frozen too.'

'You went up to my room to check up on me. Thanks.'

'I was quite relieved when you reacted. It's very different to go through this again – with a friend.'

'I'm glad you tagged me in', I declare with a sincere smile.

Then, taking a deep breath I squint and add:

'Then you never – I don't know – took advantage of it?'

'What do you mean? To solve crimes apparently faster and laugh at Scotland Yard?'

'Pfft! That's just the beginning, mate!' I smile radiantly now. 'We can prank just about everyone!'

He blinks, looking at me with curiosity and a naïve face. 'Your impish smile is oddly alluring, John, but – _the case!_'

'We can solve the case too. Just don't fall asleep yet.'

'Neat.' He smiles and I smile, because I wish I could keep my friend this light and go lucky for a long time to come.

'What was the victim's address again?'

'Third house on the left, John. Let us go in before time restarts while we're committing a felony. You tell me we have a busy night ahead, pranking Mycroft and others.'

Oh, trust me, mate, we must make sure to make the most of this twilight zone.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: Yes, I'm here again. Guess I was the one needing a bit of a time freeze. Only mine didn't work properly as you may have noticed my absence._

_I'm still spinning this tale to no certain direction, I just like the possibilities. -csf_

* * *

_**3.**_

'Sherlock, we have all the time in the world! Can't you see?' I challenge, full of fresh excitement. 'We can do whatever we want! There are no rules, no right or wrong, no consequences when there is no one else around. Honestly, Sherlock, when was the last time you wanted to take off your shoes and wiggle your toes, but there was a client at 221B?'

He shrugs. I briefly wonder if that would stop him. Social conventions are not Sherlock's forte.

'Have you never had an urge to scratch your crotch, pick your nose or blow a raspberry at someone? There are no consequences, mate, we are free to do whatever we want!'

He blinks.

'You're here, John.'

I shrug. 'Maybe I like it for a change.'

'What do you mean?' he looks less than impressed, as if I was cheating him of the John Watson he knew best. I keep telling to behave and now, given half the chance, I tell him to _misbehave_?

I let my smile spread. I'm not advocating murder or grand theft, mate. Both of which we could probably pull off, by the way.

They say integrity is about how you'd behave right even if no one was watching. At least on the big things, we're doing alright. It's not like having just each other in the know is what is keeping us right. Sherlock is my best friend, I'd get rid of a body for him, of course I would. Him being Sherlock, though, I might have to keep him from autopsying it first.

'Maybe I want to steal the gold from the Bank of England. Or take a nap at Buckingham palace. Or– or—'

'Very industrious, John, to copycat Jim Moriarty and all that, but I didn't stop Time. What if it starts again at the most inopportune moment? Who would believe we had been bathing at the Piccadilly circus fountain because Time had stopped and that meant there were no laws?'

I squint. 'Is that what you want to do? Bathe in a fountain? Do you mean skinny-dipping?'

He looks sheepish all of a sudden. 'Just a silly example, John. What would you suggest?'

I shake my head. We must have fun, right? Sherlock is approaching this physics impossibility too logically.

'I'm hungry', I declare. 'I want some food and drink soon. All this middle of the night exploring is making me hungry.' I barge in to the dead man's house at once.

Behind me I still catch the fleeting glance of Sherlock's eye roll.

_**.**_

Well, we didn't expect this.

There's an impressive array of murder weapons on display in the tiny flat. I immediately zoom in on the handgun, trying to check it for warmth, smelling it for deflagrated gunpowder. Sherlock stops me at the last second, with an iron grip on my arm. I flinch, as it tugs my left shoulder.

'Hey, don't do that, Sherlock! What do you want?'

'John, you mustn't leave your greasy fingerprints all over that gun. Can you not see we wouldn't be able to explain our presence here?'

I glance on over at my friend, slowly putting the puzzle pieces together. A lightning speed crash visit in the middle of the night, who would believe that? For all intended purposes, it's like we're not actually here, never were.

Behind Sherlock I see a laptop screen. Seems to be recording the footage from four closed circuit security cameras; three outside and one inside the flat. We're not in any of them at all.

'He must have had enemies', I comment.

'Not necessarily. He might have had _victims_, John. He lured them in here, where he kept plenty of murder weapons at choice.'

'That's a bit careless, really.' Putting on my leather gloves I carefully turn the closed bedroom door's handle. What I see through the dusk makes my stomach turn.

I try to turn on the lights, but the switch flickers uselessly.

That seems to finally catch Sherlock's attention.

'The electricity should flow at your command, John. The door handle obeyed your command. Why didn't the lights —'

He stops short. No outwardly explanation required. There's a Japanese sword embedded on a wall socket and a young woman's dead body on the floor next to it. Electric burns on her hand and exposed foot. The electric current went straight through the heart, stopping it.

Too bad, she must have been the client's type, going by her manga character cosplay outfit.

'When she died, presumably by accident, our death obsessed client decided to enact a death pact. I've just found a note in the kitchen. Why would he then come to me, but to further make sure no one else took the blame on both deaths. Sadly he didn't make it but to 221B's close vicinity. The murder victim and murderer are not just one and only, but he comes to me? Oh, it's a good case, a very good case.'

'Yeah, but how did he poison himself? Ignoring all other options laying about?'

'Poetic meaning, I suppose, John. I believe you have heard of tetrodotoxin, produced by bacteria in a symbiotic relationship with fugu, or pufferfish?'

'So, he just had a neurotoxin laying around?'

Sherlock raises his voice. 'Have you not seen the Japanese chef knives in the kitchen? The fish in the fridge?' he deplores.

'No, I didn't.' I squint. 'Why did you open the fridge, Sherlock?'

'I was thirsty.'

'Sherlock, you're not drinking milk straight out of the bottle again! Sherlock, and at a crime scene too! It's unsanitary!'

'That's alright, John. No one's the wiser', he says, phlegmatic. 'And you're glazing over the fact that I had already solved the murder and therefore was sure the milk was fit for consumption, poisons-free.'

'I'm the wiser! I know that now!'

'Five seconds rule, then.'

'What? That's not how the five seconds rule works! Actually, there's no scientific basis to—'

'Oh, please, you would have guessed some day. _And_ likely none of us will remember this in the morning...'

I cross my arms in front of me. _Oh, I'll make sure to remember._ I'm the one who gets the ruddy milk at home anyway! Sherlock can get his own milk if he's drinking from the bottle!'

'Let's just get out of here, Sherlock. You've solved the case already, I grump. There's no calling the Yard and waiting on their arrival, not tonight anyway.

_**.**_

'John, you're upset.'

'You risked your life back there, Sherlock. For purloined milk.' I grab a loose pebble and toss it from the bridge, straight at the Thames. The near to no traffic backdrop is stilled behind us, and the water is eerily frozen liquid under the bridge – a metaphorical visual of our current predicament.

We solved a case. Maybe I had entertained a hope that solving a murder, or two, would fix our reality. It didn't. _There's something the universe is trying to tell us, something we're missing._

The pebble just bounces off the water hard surface, landing farther afield, on top of the wavy surface of the compacted water course. It will sink in later, in its own time.

'Yes, I'm upset. Something might have happened to you. Something I, alone, couldn't have fixed, Sherlock.'

He nods, slowly, to pacify me. I know that will be the end of it. Not expecting an apology from the detective.

'John, are you worried time is not defrosting?'

I glance at my friend and we both chuckle at the odd choice of word. It breaks some of the built up tension.

'I don't know how to put time back to normal', the detective confesses. 'Maybe we should go skinny-dipping after all.'

I take a deep breath and still myself against the bridge corroded metal railings.

'Sherlock, you know when you don't want something to happen, something scheduled that is coming, and you wish with all your might time would just slow down, maybe even stop altogether?'

He glances at me, not very forthcoming. But I know everyone feels that way one time or another in life. Before an exam at school, before your girlfriend finishes saying she's done with the relationship when you are still in love, or that fragment in time when you see the first IED roadside exploding ahead and you just know—

'_John.'_

I look straight at Sherlock, gulping down my thoughts.

'What is it, John?'

I ask in a barely audible whisper:

'What was it, Sherlock? What has terrified you?'

He looks stricken at once. Gathering his wits he defends, a bit theatrically:

'Fear is an irrational response, John. I do not fear.'

'Fear is a natural response, and you love the natural sciences', I retort.

'Then so is love', he despises. 'I don't love. Love clouds my better judgement.'

I now know I'm on the right path here.

'It'd be unreasonable not to recognise love or fear or such emotions, Sherlock. They are factors that influence our decisions.'

'They are poor substitutes for facts.'

'And yet they still colour the facts.'

'Why are we having this unpleasant conversation? Have you found my version of Halloween, John?'

I smirk at his theatrical ways.

Then breaking down that smile, I turn solemn as I gather my own experiences:

'I remember waking up in hospital. After my shoulder, you know, the first surgery didn't suffice because there was an infection and it spread so they had to go back in, but I didn't know that it would be like that. I just feared it would return, the pain, and the shock, and that I couldn't go back, and what was I going to do with my life, I don't think I was ever so secretly frightened as then.'

Sherlock's eyes are deep green, soft and full of something undetermined, maybe kindness or admiration.

I try to finish my thought. 'As I put on a brave face to the world – soldier, remember? – inwardly I wished so hard that time would stop. Everything was changing too fast. I just wanted to go back and keep at my mates side and fight the battles I abandoned them in', I admit, with a knot forming on my throat. I don't think I ever said this aloud. Certainly not to my therapist; and there would have been no one else I'd be comfortable telling but to Sherlock.

'John', he repeats, soothingly. He places his hand on mine and assures: 'You have not abandoned your team. No one who knows you would ever have thought you could desert them willingly. You are the most brave and loyal person I have ever met.'

I dismiss the idea with a fake shrug._ I felt I had._

Sherlock clears his throat, looks coyly away and admits, after biting his lower lip and then pressing his lips firmly to gather (as if in an attempt to stop himself):

'The first time I saw time freezing to a standstill, John, Mycroft was about to leave home. University', he explains to my puzzled look. 'I would actually miss the prat.'

I smile proudly. Sherlock is sharing. I don't think he'd do this with anyone else.

'Time resumed the next morning, with the inevitable. So I thought nothing more of it.'

'Did it happen any other time?'

'Once when I was at Uni.'

I notice the sharp, sudden silence.

'Did time resume the next morning?' I ask instead.

'Or at some point. I may have been slightly out of it. Victor knew a dealer.'

I grimace. Stuck on a weird high with a world frozen solid? Not too funny, I would suppose.

We've been through this conversation before. Sherlock hardly ever mentions Victor, a _friend_ from Uni who mostly took advantage of the vulnerable genius, starved for human connection, and succeeded in closing off the most important person in my life in ways in still slowly trying to pry open, one tiny piece at a time.

Sherlock is smirking as he watches me closely – literally nothing else to watch the reactions of under the skies right now.

'John, you are promising yourself a battle. I can tell by the way you're flexing your left hand. By the way, I've detected two tremors in it already. Two minor earthquake shatters in the compact structure of the soldier in you, whereas a moment ago you were absolutely at rest. Keep your secrets if you must, but do recall that when I touched you, you came out of the frozen world. If you take a swing at someone in this time freeze—'

'They'd wake up. Good. I don't punch a man when he can't defend himself', I grumble.

Sherlock hastens to report:

'The third time this has happened you woke up when I touched you, John.'

That distracts my anger, alright.

There has got to be a common thread. _Mycroft leaving. Victor, who knows?_ That's a longer story than I can extract from Sherlock. _And me?_ Am I an accessory or a key in this reccurrence?

'Sherlock... what happened last night?' I ask, curiously. 'Did something make you wish fervently time would come to a standstill?'

Slowly he nods. 'But you don't seem to remember, John. Probably it's better that way', he reckons, shutting himself down further.

I don't know how to coax his secret out.

Will his secret keep us stuck in this freeze-frame until Sherlock is ready to face his trigger? At least we've got each other, but I'm getting really hungry and tired now. I can't sleep until Sherlock gets us out of this mess. I wouldn't leave him alone in this crazy world.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N: I should write more often, I really enjoy it._ _Need to figure out when else in my day can I fit it in, though. And if my eyes are glazed when I'm at work today, there are equal chances of me being really tired or trying to fix this plotline. -csf_

* * *

_**4.**_

'We should go check on your brother, Sherlock. You must be worried sick about him', I decide, getting up suddenly.

It's a cold damp night with no promises of tomorrow anyway, why sit, legs dangling out, in the middle of a bridge, looking down at a Thames that refuses to flow, or spot the bats that hang impossibly suspended in the air, wait for the reverberating strike of Big Ben's clock that will never come on the hour even if the arrow in the dial precariously tilts towards 12 as we stand in a Time Freeze world.

The detective grimaces at my sudden animation. 'I'm not worried about Mycroft!' he growls, a deep, dark threat underlining his words. As I turn my head to look at him, his mercurial eyes narrow to a viper's slit.

I shrug, nonchalant.

'Yeah, I heard you, mate. _Y__ou don't do human emotions_, fine. Just pretend I'm the one worrying, alright?'

A small hint of a knowing smile tugs at his lips. Without bite he flips upside down his volatile emotions and snaps in easy banter:

'That I can believe. You are a worrier, John. Really, you can be highly irrational at times, don't know how I put up with you sometimes.'

I scoff, as I know he's just got to have the last word on this touchy feely topic; _sibling love_.

The skinny detective still smirks as he allows me to lead the way.

'Are we walking there, then?' he challenges me, amused.

'Unless we wake up a cabbie and have him follow us about in this middle of the night wander, yes.'

Sherlock is not pacified by my short-sighted, honest man's logic.

'There must be some car, somewhere, left with the keys in the ignition...' he mutters, looking round.

Knowing the detective's unprecedented mastery on materialising cabs as soon as he searches for one, I am almost willing to believe he'll find his magic car. _Almost_. This is London, too busy as a city not to have some opportunistic thief taking immediate advantage of such a scenario.

'Sherlock...' I start, my voice sounding odd even to my own ears. 'If at best we are in a dream, your dream I'd guess, why can't we – I don't know – dream up a car, or close our eyes and upon opening them we're there?'

Baker Street's famous detective scolds his features to a carefully studied impassiveness. He ponders me for a long moment, then sighs heavily, before stepping up closer. I watch him approach, wondering why won't he take me seriously. But he just stands there, towering and non-threatening in a weird composite manner that is Sherlock Holmes all over. Disconcertingl yet familiar.

I decide to ignore his inner antics, and resume my power walk. He follows closely.

Before I can make sense of anything, I'm startled and almost trip on my feet and fall wayside into the curb. Sherlock has just slapped my backside and immediately stared out into the night in his most innocent expression. 'Felt that, John?' he asks fleetingly, as if a particular shop window was most intriguing.

I wouldn't put it past him that he's studying my reflection.

'Felt it? You made me jump a meter high! You know I felt it! Why not tap me on the shoulder? Are you trying to prove this isn't a dream because I can feel pain?' I'm rubbing the affected area, and blushing too, I know not why. _Sherlock can be a big kid sometimes._

'Wouldn't slap you on your war wounded shoulder, John. Do give me some credit, I'm not that heartless.'

I watch him move on, utterly confused.

_**.**_

London is oblivious to our presence, showing itself to us without filters or glamour. We walk through rougher areas of the city, and even a gang scuffle on a side alley, without a pause to consider our safety. Of course we're safe, we don't even belong here, we won't infringe our presence on the memory of this place.

'What are you looking at?' Sherlock asks me in genuine curiosity, as he ignores easily a couple of basic crimes – they hold no mystery, hence no appeal to my friend.

Or he'd want me to believe. I know better. I know Sherlock's motivation is that of a good man, righting the world's wrongs. It's not what keeps that ecstatic, goofy smile on his face when we get to a crime scene laced with mystery, but yet, it's there, his desire to do good, to be one of the good guys.

I should know. _He keeps me right._

'Idiots', I mutter under my breath, as I glance sideways, just before taking off in short, stony steps to a bunch of kids – not that young, but kids altogether – confronting each other in territorial expressions of the gang mentality. One's got a knife. Two egg him on. The other side has another kid, playing brave as he faces the weapon, but something in his greenish expression tells me he's got no weapon and his mates won't stick around for long. He's lucky if he gets out of this unscathed and he's just realising that.

'John?' Sherlock calls me, rushing forward, ready to get into any fight I wake up from the stillness – and I'd just about do that, to tell off these young fools.

I grab a discarded soda can from the pavement and swing it on the knife blade, so conveniently poised out in prominent front stage. Twisting the aluminium I manage to squeeze the impaled can and knife ensemble off the young fool's grip. _No touching, so I haven't woke him up either._ Smirking I just walk off with the attack weapon to be, confiscated permanently from irresponsible hands.

This is a scuffle where no one needs serious injuries tonight. Can't quite fix the criminal intent, but it helps that rage fuelled gestures won't be backed by sharp cold steel tonight.

'Are we going?' I call my smirking friend, as I toss the knife into a nearby street gutter. Better clogging up rainwater drains than blood spilling, I'd say.

Sherlock follows me with a wide eyed expression of curiosity.

'You're mastering the rules of this parallel reality already, John. Shouldn't be surprised, an unruly mind like yours would be naturally flexible to take in such fluid reality', he adds with rancour.

Sweet lord have mercy, I think Sherlock has grudgingly just paid me a compliment.

_**.**_

'What do you remember from last night, John?'

It's a fair question as we walk the long streets of London in our mid night stroll.

I shrug. 'Not much. Must have been worn out. Went to bed early.'

'And before that?'

'We were up chatting in the living room, right?'

'Can you remember what we were talking about?'

I try hard. Then it hits me. 'My miserable love life...' I groan. Sherlock "the machine" Holmes is not the best agony aunt I could find myself. 'Maybe this is _my_ time freeze after all.'

He hums, distantly. More of an acknowledgement that he heard me than agreement.

I particularise: 'All I remember is saying I don't think I'll ever be in love again.'

'I disagreed, wholeheartedly', Sherlock tells me.

I look him straight. He never shifts his face, still looking on ahead himself.

'I thought you didn't believe in love, Sherlock.'

'I believe in you, John.'

'What does that even mean?' I scrunch my forehead, trying to understand. Some foggy memory making an effort to reappear.

He tells me with as much emotion as one reads a takeaway menu:

'Yesterday, I told you I believed you had been in love before—'

'True', I recognise easily.

'And still were.'

I blow a raspberry, trying to break the spell of Sherlock's sudden solemnity.

'In love with whom? _No one loves me mate_, not like that.' I shake my head with a hollow laugh. 'It's easy for you, isn't it? High cheek bones, slick suits and dreamy eyes. You're a hit with the ladies. With the blokes too, I suppose, for those who go for that. It's all good.'

'I know it's all good.'

'That's just what I said. You're repeating yourself.'

'I don't repeat myself.'

'I heard you the first time.'

He stops short, forcing me to a standstill, a couple of feet between us.

'John, you are immensely loveable. I believe I told you that yesterday.'

I huff in derision. 'Yeah, right!'

'John, would I lie to you?'

'Just all the time.'

'If you don't believe me, then how can I prove you my sincerity?'

I shrug, feeling grumpy now.

Not much of an agony aunt, and I should have known better than to share _this_ with a human machine.

_**.**_

If Mycroft Holmes, aspiring secret leader of the free world, knew how easy it was for us, tonight, to enter his mansion domains, he'd – understandably so – freak out.

Special circumstances, or not. Mycroft would probably berate himself – secretly – for not having pondered the chance of a Big Universal Time Freeze event. He likes to credit himself as pondering all scenarios.

The cctv's master-in-command has not spared himself of his own video surveillance at his residence, both recorded and analysed in real time by a security guard, off-site. But that's not all. Twelve digit password on the front door and reinforced, bullet proof glass on the Edwardian house in upside London are the easy to spot modifications. Add reinforced concrete cellar insulation, anti-nuclear radiation paint on the exposed façades and what else the MI5 wanted a voluntary test for their prototypes and Mycroft's got it – the extended pro version too.

I wager Mycroft could be worried that by inhabiting homes next to foreign diplomats and movie stars he'd be a target by mistake at some point, he'll surely downplay the importance of his governmental work if I point out the security features about. I might just do that anyway. Just to watch the paranoia build up behind his listless eyes.

'My brother will not mingle with the criminal classes, John', Sherlock comments as he confidently analyses the password dials. As if that was a terrible short-sightedness on Mycroft's part. And kept Baker Street protected by some thieves and thugs' honour code.

'You know the code to your brother's house, right?'

'Of course not, John. It's meant to be secret after all.'

'But... in case of an emergency? I've got Harry's flat key, and we hardly talk.'

'The ones on the red lanyard? They don't open Harry's front door.'

'What?'

'Old keys, convenient excuse. She doesn't want to give you a chance to find her booze stash ahead of Christmas. It's... significant.'

'You're just messing with me now.' I shake my head, jaw firmly set; against who, in particular, I don't know. 'And how would you know all that?'

'I take much interest in you, John', he tells me naturally.

'Quid pro quo, you expected me to burglar Mycroft's pad for secret stashes of cake?'

Sherlock smirks openly and leaves it at that. 'Mycroft rightly assumes I can deduce the chosen code to enter his dwellings. Ah, of course, child's play!' Confidently, Sherlock presses a long sequence of numbers – and it's not one-two-three up to twelve.

The display flashes red. Sherlock seems taken aback, as a personal defeat. A soft blush colours his cheeks.

I sigh and roll my eyes.

'Sherlock?' I try to call him.

He shushes me indignantly and focuses harder on the panel. I ignore my friend, knowing he needs to figure this out, get it out of his system, and that he won't stop until he's defeated the elder Holmes.

'Sherlock, _please_?'

Again he ignores me, frantically punching different code sequences, getting more and more affronted by the repeated denial red lights.

'Sherlock!' I shout.

He finally turns to his side. Then twirls around, trying to find me as I'm not where he's left me. He sees me at last, within the building, holding the door open.

'How did you do that?' he shoots the question, so fast as back when we first met as he deduced orally at the speed of his mind.

I shrug. 'Didn't touch the door whilst jimmying the lock, so not to "wake up" the electricity. Things don't wake up until we touch them, right? So the alarm system was "asleep" and the door just opened for me.'

Sherlock blinks.

'Found the code yet?' I add. 'It will be something like _"if you must, Sherlock"_ in Arabic translated into an arbitrary numeric code – your brother lives for these moments.'

'More likely "piss off, numbskull" in French', he admits, amused. 'We shared a childhood, alas.'

I chuckle. Sherlock's mouth tugs itself up at the edges, and he follows me inside the building.

'Mycroft doesn't have a secret stash of cake, John. He has a personal chef.'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	16. Chapter 16

_A/N: Time to wrap this up. I took liberties with Mycroft's residence, but hopefully inkeeping with the little glimpses from series 3 and 4. The blurred ending is a gift, and you can read it as you like._

_Still not British. Or a writer. You know that by now. -csf_

* * *

_**5.**_

Organised. Methodical. Analytical to a fault.

Harsh lines. Sombre colours. Slick metal surfaces juxtaposed with rugged cold stone and the odd overindulgence of a gilded baroque chandelier. A regal display of solid tradition and sombre civil service.

I glance at Sherlock, the younger brother, to assess his reaction to the older brother's house. He knows the premises already, of course, and navigates through the rooms dutifully with no surprise.

I start paying more attention to those pursed lips and knitted brows. Sherlock keeps up some indifference act, probably a self-defence mechanism learnt from childhood, completely useless as we are virtually undetectable right now. Sherlock would keep his act even if I wasn't here, I suspect. But he must know I can see past it.

The carefully crafted decor on the large area around us is so different to Baker Street, with its warm categorised chaos, the same creative hierarchical structure and thought process that guides the genius in his intricate mind processes. Like a complex symphony, full of undertones and comebacks on ideas and feelings, thoughts linked into stringed sentences and balanced by the emotional expression of the philosophical mind.

Mycroft's, in contrast, is cold, clean, aseptic and highly staged. His rooms belong in an austere catalogue or museum. They are uninspired, stable, proper. They let on nothing of the man who takes up residence here.

There's an ignored flight of stairs and Sherlock keeps leading the way. I feel like opening a closet by chance, just to check for hidden skeletons. No one should be this clean, tidy, _perfect_... _Boring_.

I'd welcome an actual skeleton, to be perfectly honest.

Even in his personal quarters Mycroft Holmes is the master of strategy and plays our perceptions, remaining a cool detached presence, high above us all. This house – hardly a Home in the sense that 221B is to us – is the very projection of the space a man like Mycroft should inhabit. _A_ _farce_. A carefully crafted stage upon which Mycroft comes in, engages with the guests, impresses them, controlling their perceptions, eluding them by providing only what he wants them to see. As he deems to be perceived.

If I have thought, at times, that Sherlock can be a big controlled and could use to lighten up, Mycroft blows the scale on social contriteness.

I sigh quietly, because it's stark to me now how little enjoyment Mycroft allows himself. In here I won't ever find even a tea stained cup on the sink, a chair misaligned with the table, a shoe fallen off the rack. They'd be cardinal sins in Mycroft's perfect stage.

I see now the origins of Sherlock's esteemed sock index.

And I pause and wish I could see the real Mycroft. The one that must inhabit the primed, three piece suit man I know. The one Sherlock still sees when he glares routinely at his older brother as he pops in for an unscheduled visit (or inspection, however you want to call it).

I find Sherlock looking intently at me. As our glances meet he dismisses: 'Obviously my brother is a neat freak. Do recall that the next time I set off the fire alarm for leaving my Bunsen burner unattended, John.'

_**.**_

Sherlock unites his hands behind his back and with his most urbane smile he ushers me: 'Shall I lead the way to my insufferable brother's room? That is, I believe, the objective of your insistence to visit Mycroft, _to s__ee him_. Hopefully, not to wake him. I must warn you, there will be no midnight reconciliations.'

I nod, vaguely. Still disturbed by an instinct that this place is somehow _wrong._ As if I had stepped into a fake home, the real one hidden behind the mirrors.

I'm itching, in the very least, for a secret bunker, really. Where Mycroft stashed his cake and washes crap telly – or his planted cctv, it's very much the same – from a messy sofa with mismatched cushions.

Sherlock and I walk the impressive corridor under the vague light torches from our phones, past symmetric Ming dynasty vases (probably the real deal), our steps muffled by the cashmere threaded rug. All the best money can buy, yet soulless as an empty vessel.

'Wait!' I stop the detective, as I catch a glimpse of a dimly lit desk lamp, the soft glow animating the very end of a modern fitted kitchen where an old cast iron construction stove warms the house with the lingering scent of burnt logs and spices and confectionery. _Cake, Mycroft, cake._ We detour our house inspection through the open plan kitchen with an odd wallpaper repeating the image of cinder block walls. _Here's that bunker._ A chromed refrigerator, taller than Mycroft himself, overpowers the empty back wall. Pristine shelves and hours, wide French window with a clear view to the night that has settled over the inanimate garden.

It's in the warm light of the disproportionately big kitchen that we find the human side of Mycroft Holmes I was looking for. There, on a humble wooden side table, bundled up is a discarded light throw (royal blue, of course), draped slightly over the nearby radiator, by a stack of papers, newspaper clippings, Polaroid pictures (anyone still resorts to those?) and cryptic notes.

Sherlock lowers a hand to the abandoned chair.

'Still warm. My brother's been working late. He's gone up now, after a drink of water. My brother always has a drink of water before bed.' Glancing at me, he adds: 'It was his excuse to wet the bed when he was a child.'

I chuckle, knowing better than to take the younger Holmes seriously.

'What's he been working on? Are- are those submarine plans?'

Sherlock's hands circle my shoulders and he very determinedly steers me away from the international secrets laid out on a kitchen table.

We take some small stairs located at the back onto the upper floor. Sherlock is more jittery now, not allowing the time to study the place - other than emergency exits, possible hideouts and all the other area reconnaissance the army instilled deep in me and that comes as a second nature now.

There's half a pang of guilt as we illicitly make our way into the master bedroom, but Sherlock is deeply focussed on his brother now, more than in trying dig out dirt for future blackmail. _He'll multitask anyway, he's Sherlock._

The moonlight crosses the window pane of wide windows with drawn out curtains, bringing a hazy white glare to the spacious bedroom. The bed is stately to say the least. Four poster bed with draped velvet fabric hiding from view the man of the house. His thin gingery hair is a bit dishevelled, as if he had often ran his fingers through it. His eyes are red rimmed and black circled as if his been nursing constant worry. His posture is natural, grabbing on to the pillow and bedding in his sleep, but the stillness of his silhouette is drastically off putting. I can sense how disturbing it is for Sherlock when everyone in the world seems frozen like this, how he'd reach out to me, bringing me out of this unnatural state, and how much he must be containing himself not to do it again with Mycroft.

'What's that?' I remark, pointing somewhere across the room. An overnight bag; expensive leather concealing together a small stash of personal belongings. I go check it out, if only to give the two brothers some personal space.

Sherlock follows me at once, ignoring the offered chance. 'It appears my brother is travelling.'

'There will be rejoicing and celebrating in the commonwealth, I bet.'

Sherlock ignores my tirade. 'My brother's territory is London, John. Wales at a push. He really avoids Scotland for some reason, and he's careful to avoid being spotted in Northern Ireland since— No, delete that, John. He can tell you all about it himself next Christmas.'

I shake my head, smirking. I know Sherlock is making this up. They do that, the two Holmes brothers. _Make legends of each other. It's a twisted form of praise, really._

'Sherlock', I start, glancing inside. 'That's not a traveller's bag. Your brother is not going on holidays.'

'He's really been promising himself holidays for ages', the younger brother is particularly hung up on that idea, I notice. As if unannounced holidays were a breach of a sibling contract.

I take up a bottle of pills and read the label at the dim light of the moon filtering through the window.

'Sherlock, your brother is having minor surgery in the morning. He's staying at the hospital.'

'Nonsense!'

'Okay, _private_ hospital.'

Sherlock rolls his eyes.

'Less nonsensical but still preposterous, John. Mycroft would have told me!'

I nod. Of course he'd have.

'Sherlock, after I went to bed, last night...' _Feels like way longer than "last night" for some reason. _'Did Mycroft phone you?'

Sherlock's tense features contract into something akin to a lightning storm. He pales but his gaze grows stronger.

Some blurred memory is being retrieved by the consulting genius as we speak.

_Why did he feel the need to file it away?_

_Too emotional. _He didn't know how to properly handle it, but to distance himself from the knowledge that his brother – his only brother – had sprung on him. Certainly last minute to avoid the weight of apprehension on Sherlock to have been more prolonged.

_Hit Sherlock like a ton of bricks, that did._

'Sherlock?'

The detective whispers, in a familiar voice now drained of his usual confidence:

'He came over. He sat on your chair. He told me about it, the surgery. I got worried, he laughed it off. Told me I was being dramatic, calling for attention, he wouldn't have that. "_Pull yourself together, Sherlock, it's a simple procedure, done by one of the best surgeons in the field, there's absolutely no room for drama"_, he said. But I could tell, there was trepidation in his features, he was brisk, almost uncontrolled, almost _not Mycroft_. I could sense his apprehension. And I wished time would come to a standstill.'

He looks at me, haunted green eyes asking for leniency as he gives in minutely to the emotion. I give my friend a strong smile and note:

'It's a smallish overnight bag, Sherlock. The medication is minor, really. And he's not shown any medical symptoms you'd have picked up on. As far as I know he's getting a beauty mark removed or something like that. You needn't to be scared. Besides, you've got me.'

'I've got you', he repeats, slightly confused; baited by my words, veering away from that panic I just saw pooling in him.

'I say your brother is always stalking me. I can do a bit of stalking back. Quid pro quo. I'll see who's the surgeon. I may even work my way into the operating theatre if it helps.'

Sherlock nods, oddly tantalized by my face, searching for some sign of deception that would keep him from accepting the hope I'm handing him.

That sibling rivalry is on hold for now.

'And', I add for good measure, 'if your brother has any weird tattoo beyond the standard issue disposable gown, I'll be sure to let you know.'

Sherlock's eyes sparkle at what I'm sure the medical deontological code would severely frown upon.

'Oh, I already know about that one... Tell me if there's more, John.'

I glance at the sleeping man on the bed. _You've no idea how much your brother actually loves you._

_**.**_

'Let me get this straight. First time when time stood still for you, Sherlock, your brother was leaving home. Second time...'

'Victor was an idiot and not worth scrutinizing, John', Sherlock almost growls. I raise my hands in surrender to pacify him. I'm not prying, honest.

'Third time', I pick up, 'you were worrying about your brother's surprise surgery.'

'Minor surgery', Sherlock corrects with a controlled breath intake.

'Chances are this is _your_ dream, mate.'

He hums in agreement.

I start again. 'You can go to bed and we'll wake up back to normal tomorrow.' He nods. 'And I'll go make sure your brother is in safe hands and he's minor op goes according to plan. You can find out where he's doing his recovery and plan ways to torment him. Lovingly, I mean.'

'On it already, John.' He flashes a genuine smile.

I smirk.

'Thanks', I add. 'For calling me in.'

We've been walking a long time and we're back at 221 Baker Street, stopping at the front door, hesitating to break this up. I'm sure there's more to see in the unusually still London we know as frenetic and demanding.

Sherlock smiles again, his attention never wavering from me, as he steps closer, shortening the already narrow distance between us. Due to our difference in heights, he's towering over me, but I find that's alright, it always is, with Sherlock.

His smile is precious as his gloved hands cup my face to make me look at him.

'Just drop it, John. There's still one thing I must do before time and accountability restart.'

I blink. _Really?_

He comes closer, his eyes are blazing emeralds under the lamplights and the reflected light from 221B, we seem to have left them all on during our absence. Don't suspect there was a reason to worry about the electric bill.

Sherlock smirks, dangerously. I'm not opposed to a bit of danger.

Rain starting falling hard on the pavement around us, bouncing off the concrete with elasticity. A car crosses the corner, too fast for a residential area. And I vaguely recall we still have a dead body on our front step.

We never seemed to notice the moment time restarted its inexorable run. In fact, I think time has stopped for us alone some more.

Time to call Lestrade, though, and let him know Sherlock's already solved the case. Again. Lestrade won't even find this amiss.

_**.**_


	17. Chapter 17

_A/N: Let's get us some Lestrade, he wasn't in on that last one.__ -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'What is that, Sherlock?' I ask after a quick glance at my friend, from my armchair. 'If you keep munching it will spoil your appetite for dinner.'

He glances up from his anatomy book research and hums vaguely.

'Gingerbread Person', he mentions fleetingly through another bite. Figure he'd answer factually. However—

'Did you mean: Gingerbread Man?'

He takes stock, looking up in earnest. 'How would you know? You've got three buttons to go on, John!'

'That's, hmm, very inclusive of you, by the way. Traditionally—'

'Ha! Tradition!' he derides with all the scorn he willingly reserves for _Tradition_.

'But, seriously, whatever tickles your fancy...' I gesture vaguely. _He's Sherlock_; I'm preaching to the choir here.

He frowns as he pins me with deep grey eyes.

'Could it be a Gingerbread Soldier, John?'

I squint. Now I'm positive he's messing with me.

'Could also be an Overcomplicating—'

The doorbell rings, interrupting us.

'Lestrade!' Sherlock recognises with barely concealed excitement. 'About time he got me a case! My brain's been left rotting!'

Staying behind, I'm muttering under my breath – _and me, I'm here, what am I now?_ – but there's not enough feeling behind the words and I get up to join the detective crusade gathering at the top of the stairs.

Baker Street is coming to life. About time, too, Sherlock is an emotional eater in times of crisis – and lack of cases are intense crisis around here. I was about to have to hit the streets for groceries on a particularly stormy evening. Not the right time for my old shoulder war wound, it lets me know.

It didn't help that Sherlock and I took a train to a failed crime scene a couple of days ago, through an intense downpour of rain, so intense that flooding held the train stalled on the tracks for hours before it was safe to resume the ride. It wasn't cold in the train carriage, and enough heat was being metaphorically produced by hot tempers confined in small quarters for an undefined period of time. But I fell asleep against the cold window pane among the general disparaging and annoyance – I've been at war, I'll sleep through anything short of explosions and enemy fire. Because Sherlock Holmes takes the forward seat each time, which puts me with my back towards the train pull each time, this time that meant I was squeezed against the cold window on my left shoulder by a plump (gorgeous, actually) young woman. In front of us, Sherlock had her slim fiancé at his side. Long story short, Sherlock built a new wing in his mind palace from scratch before the train resumed the ride. We only woke up back in London, past our station anyway. Sherlock had a few choice remarks for my lack of attention and not rousing him at the correct location, but he shut up as soon as he heard me groan and saw me tumble over against his seat. He grabbed me fast and ensured I wasn't left alone to take care of myself, or even walk out of the station, from then on. He's been keeping an eye on me since. I've been trying to push him away for just as long.

This is Sherlock's first concession to engage in something other than keeping me company and ensuring I take my meds at the correct times (which I try to delay every time). Predictably, he needs to act like a jerk about it. _He's Sherlock_.

Or, possibly, he knows I am feeling awkward for having held back the super detective onsite, and that I much rather deal with a jerk flatmate than an exceedingly caring, saccharine friend who would only highlight my physical weakness by ways of excessive caring. I know he cares; _he's been all along studying the anatomy of joints and articulations on those medical text books._

All my inner grumblings are carefully wiped from my expression before I reach the two conferencing detectives.

'Greg.'

The detective inspector is acting surprised to find us in on an evening like this.

'Where have you two been? The Yard has almost missed you! Thought you two were investing away some top secret stuff!'

Sherlock expressively rolls his eyes. 'One can dream!'

'So what held you back?'

Sherlock glances at me – _he really doesn't get where the rumours come from, huh_ – and answers, much to my surprise: 'Research, Lestrade. You should try it some day.'

The inspector is nonplussed. 'So it's not all genius then?' _Checkmate._

Sherlock is not above a dark glare.

'I believe you have a case, Lestrade, do not ruin my mood if you want me to take it.'

'You will take this one.'

'Says who?' is the indolent reply.

'I can tell when you're jittery. You need to lay off that research of yours and take a case. John, tell Sherlock—'

I'm already raising both hands in a surrender gesture – _not my battle, mate! _– when I flinch and grab onto my left elbow, cradling my arm. Wrong move and I've woken up the sleeping injury. Swallowing back the pain and tasting bile, I turn around and leave them summarily, not bothering to excuse myself after the obvious display of _brokenness._

_You are a class act tonight, John!_

I can almost hear the expletive Sherlock growls under his breath to Greg, assigning blame. The inspector is already taking charge of the electrified minefield blanketing 221B nowadays.

'The case can wait a while. It was really more of an excuse to check up on you two', he adds Sherlock's way, much to the younger detective's dismay. 'John, what you need is a nice night in. Here, I'll start by putting the kettle on. Sherlock's going to order some take away.'

'Am I?' he's surprised.

'You are. And then we can... I don't know, play board games, bake, read bedtime stories.'

The consulting detective is not convinced.

'And you've done this before with whom, inspector?'

'My kids when they were younger', he admits. 'You'll love it! Come on, Sherlock. Bring John his pyjamas from his room. I'm sprucing the fire in the living room. This will be fun!'

Sherlock grumbles. 'Don't think so. All board games have been individually banned from 221B. There's not one John and I can still bear.'

The inspector blinks, but refuses to lose ground on his optimism. 'Fine, we'll make our own. A crime solving board game.'

'Neat.' Surprisingly Sherlock approves.

'There will be rules.'

'I can live with that. And contribute with my own.'

'Rules that will make sense.'

'Spoilsports.'

I huff a laugh at their exaggerated antics whilst dropping myself back in my armchair, still carefully protecting my arm and shoulder. The pain throbs relentlessly.

'John?'

I'm roused by a careful hand on my good shoulder and find Lestrade leaning towards me. 'Now would be a good time for your meds', he points out, fatherly.

I take gratefully the cuppa he's handing me but refuse to add those particular extras. They always make me drowsy, I recall as I take a few blessed long sips of tea.

Sherlock is going downstairs to retrieve the Chinese takeaway being delivered. Greg is pottering about the kitchen presumably tidying up; he better not touch Sherlock's experiments or we'll have a stroppy detective for company.

The tea is nice, but it's got a funny aftertaste. And my head swims. It finally clicks. _Oi, that's not fair!_

I glare as Greg returns to the living room, but he's not quite gloating as I suspected. He looks bothered as he tries to check up on me. He also measuredly checks how much medicated tea I've ingested. Fatherly instincts, I suppose.

'Are you sure you don't need a doctor?'

'I am a doctor!'

Sherlock is coming back up with the food. Greg pulls up one of the side tables and a chair for himself. We share the food parcels and chopsticks with ease and for a moment I feel revived by the warm atmosphere and the promise of tasty food. The pain in my shoulder fades as I'm being distracted by two bickering detectives trying to plan a game to play. One is opting for a charades type of amusement, the other wants an element of chance by throwing dice or by guesswork. I let a small smile take over my face and close my eyes languidly in the warm dry heat of the crackling fire.

As I'm falling asleep, Greg and Sherlock are negotiating karaoke entries and an actual body search for clues in your adversaries. It's going to be a quick game, as they'll have forgotten half their made up instructions before they call me in to play.

_**.**_

Little did I expect to be awaken by a considerate flatmate hours later, insisting I sleep on a bed instead my armchair tonight. Greg Lestrade is long gone, it seems, but the warmth of the evening lingers on between the homely walls of Baker Street. There's a manila file abandoned on the kitchen table, presumably a case the detective inspector left for Sherlock.

What I didn't expect was a glimpse at a whole infantry of Gingerbread Army Soldiers territorially spread around the kitchen's surfaces and worktops, cooling down. I frown, open my mouth and wonder what exactly has gone on whilst I slept—

'Just drop it, John', Sherlock precedes me, drily. 'You can bake Gingerbread Detectives or whatever you fancy tomorrow', he assures me, and gently helps me up the stairs.

_**.**_


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N: Remember Octie and 'Ecology Sherlock' (I called it that, I'm coining it)? If you disliked those chapters them you might want to give these ones a miss. I'm bringing Octie back__. At least I think I am; still under construction, please be patient. -csf_

* * *

_**1st.**_

The detective contorts his features in mock disgust and theatrical displeasure as he finishes reading my latest blog entry on one of our past cases.

'Pfft! I'm clearly cleverer than you let on, John.'

'I call you _brilliant_ in there.'

'Five times. It loses the ring of authenticity with the repetition... How about particularising on my unique mental prowess or compliment my wit and—'

'Why would I bother? You do a good job of it on your own, mate!'

He smirks fondly, but in a genuine display of shyness he won't look me in the eye.

'And this case you posted about? Another murder? I don't _only_ solve murders, John. I'm a detective, not a murder fanatic.'

_He could have fooled me already._

Sherlock replies to what he reads on my face, self-motivated to proceed on his own:

'Murder receives the ultimate expression of decry and ignominy from society. It thrills the ordinary citizen as it does not distinguish between rich or poor, men and women, old and young. It is the ultimate leveler, John! But I am not choosy. I can crack a Chinese riddle as fast as I can find a triple murderer on the tube ride.'

'Yes, I'm sure... Is this about that case you got by post today? Because, that case? I can't see the appeal in it for you, Sherlock.'

'I'm being nice?' he tries with big round eyes.

'To whom? Nope. It's not that, Sherlock.'

'I'm curious, then.'

'You may be curious but it's under a five. Definitely not the type of case you'd usually take.'

'Then I won't take it.' He quickly looks away. 'Seeing I can't count on your help. Can't be expected to work without a trained assistant.'

I sigh, recognising I'm being played by a consulting five year old. The case does not sound all that bad. Considering Sherlock can remain engaged in his case, and not get so bored he'll be climbing the walls.

'Also, John, you are in need of a change. Oh, just drop it, John, don't bother denying it; I'm _brilliant_, according to your own assertions. Did you expect me not to notice or just hoped I wouldn't mention? You have recently gained six pounds from overwork and badly slept nights, as your shoulder has been troubling you after that disastrous train journey. For once, murder might not be the crime to reel you back to health. We need something more subtle, a chance to ease you back in, so to speak.'

'Sherlock, I'm fine', I state drily.

'I'll be the judge of that!' he claims imperiously. I chuckle easily.

'Fine, if you insist. Shall I pack for us, then?'

'Pack for yourself, John. My bags are always packed when I go get them', he waves dismissively.

_Yeah, I wonder how..._

I chuckle as I get up. 'Will you contact the client to let them know we are on our way?'

He nods, absently. I wonder if the client will welcome the surprise guests.

And anyway, Sherlock is wrong; my shoulder is doing much better nowadays. It is he who needs a change of air, from his constant monitoring and worrying over his flatmate.

_**.**_

Sherlock Holmes is a man of many talents. He can read an empty crime scene in a few seconds and tell you who's been in there, their occupation and what they did before they left. He'll even tell you if one of the actors in the murder had a pet. Scotland Yard is always baffled by this ability. So am I, in a different manner. I always find it brilliant, really, but I've come to expect this level of genius from my talented friend. It's perhaps not entirely fair to the hard work that goes behind his genius, sure, but it's always a siphoned gift to be had at the right time.

What I'm hoping to find out is how the gifted detective can cope with a cold case, a lost crime scene, an evolved location, dead witnesses, archived evidence, and stubborn local constabularies. In short, taking Sherlock Holmes from the urban landscape and landing him in a little maritime village, with a local parish priest, gossipy neighbours, a twice-a-day train station and characters that could have come out of a Miss Marple novel. A rundown seaside resort area that has been taken over by incongruous shopping centre progress and a community of retired pastime gardeners, quickly losing its art Deco glamour traces.

Oh, and there's been no murder. At least, according to any evidence left behind and recovered by the local authorities. What we have is an old missing person's case, back from the times before Interpol and international passports data bases.

And I'm left wondering why Sherlock would even take this flimsy case.

Any day of the week but today Sherlock Holmes would stay well away from these cases. Yet, he clearly stated his interest in this particular case.

Because, as he flippantly stated, he thinks it will help me, in some bizarre and convoluted way.

Sherlock is becoming a softie.

_**.**_

'John, you would do well to pack in advance like me', Sherlock reproaches, dignified.

'I packed for two, so don't gimme that!'

_Just because I can't find my laptop charger..._ I end up sighing and resorting to my last chance: 'Oh Oracle of Fortune, in your infinite ability to deduce people and events, can you foretell where I'll find my laptop charger?'

From across the train seats, with the formica table between us, Sherlock gives me a strange glare, not fully committed. 'Yes, I took it', he fesses up.

'Great, hand it over.'

'It's on your bedside table, John, at 221B. You will not have the need to use your laptop during this case. Think of it as vacations.'

'But – my blog!' I protest.

'You can use your phone for that.'

_Can I?_ I don't need to verbalize it for Sherlock to read it right out of my mind.

'Yes, John. I can show you how. You are not particularly tech savvy, are you?'

I blink angrily, no need to rub it in. 'I was at a war front when phones shrunk down enough to fit in back jeans pockets, if only you could remember that.'

'And whilst on leave, I expect you had other things on the back of your jeans, like an illegal service gun?'

I smirk in nonchalance. 'Of course I didn't – like you said, it'd be illegal.'

He rolls his eyes. 'And, of course, mobile phones didn't make their way into the glossy pages of "Guns & Ammo" magazines. Oh, John, I know it's difficult for a man like you, but could you not be so dreadfully dull?'

I angrily shut my laptop lid.

'I'll stop browsing the pages of "Guns & Ammo" when you stop reading the local papers obituaries to play Dead man Bingo.'

'I only crashed in on the one funeral, John. Otherwise how would I have known if I had a full row? Even I can't tell between an accidental strychnine poisoning from a perfectly planned one!'

'Oh, please, you just—'

'_Tickets and passes, please. All tickets from London's Charing Cross, please...'_

Sherlock looks poetically out of the train window, onto fields with the last of their summer crops, leaving me to fumble on my phone app to bring up the tickets he bought for us. It ends up taking me a while longer than the train officer would have hoped for, and it's with relief that he finally moves on to the next passengers.

_**.**_

It's been too many hours cross country to count. My brain has been slowly turned to mush by the rhythmic trepidation of the train rails that shakes the compartment, the seats, our bones. The last half hour I've been absently checking my phone, deeming all humanity boring, putting it away, and starting all over. I'm nearly out of battery. I stow away my phone back in my jeans pocket, absently following my friend's line of sight to the surrounding landscape, rural and open, scarred only by the train tracks and the occasional clumps of trees.

'We need to stop the train, John.'

Sherlock's words are as calm as his expression is resolute.

'Stop the train? Why? We're not there yet. Almost, but not there.'

My friend is already taking charge, grasping the edge of the table to push himself off his seat, eyes fixed on a small red emergency lever on the far wall.

I stop him by grabbing onto his sleeve.

'What happened?'

'Murder.'

'I know. We're on our way, Sherlock.' Wait, I thought it was a missing persons case.

'No. Out there, John! On the fields.'

'Great, then we call the police when we disembark. We're not hijacking a train so you can see the crime scene quicker. We can get out at the next stop and double back.'

Sherlock looks absolutely thunderstruck as he ponders my logic. Finally, he composes himself and nods.

'Pack your laptop, John. We're leaving at the next stop. Oh, John, I knew you wouldn't let me down. You're my lucky charm. You can always attract a good murder. The seaside cold case can wait!'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	19. Chapter 19

_A/N: For reasons unknown even to me, __I'm bringing Octie back__. -csf_

* * *

_**2nd.**_

In his best scholar demeanour, the great Sherlock Holmes declares solemnly: 'She is a purveyor of maritime memorabilia around Scarborough.'

I squint. 'You mean; "she sells seashells by the sea shore".'

He nods, conceding the point to me. I tally up another point in our made up game where Sherlock is way ahead of me. He's a natural at this. And we're bored enough in a police station outside London, waiting on Lestrade to vouch for us to a bewildered local police inspector.

My turn. 'Hmm... The tyre clad expedients of the inner city public transportation-'

'"The wheels on the bus go round and round", John.'

Damn it. He gets double points for guessing correctly before I finish my attempt. He keeps doing that, too.

'That's fourteen points advantage to me, I believe. Are you tempted to forfeit yet, John?'

I raise a finger. 'I'll do better after I get a cuppa from the vending machine. Want one?'

He shrugs, but I know it's an act. I can read him. I'll get him a pack of crisps too. He's getting too skinny again.

He'll have them as he's distracted by the "talk like Mycroft" game we've been playing. Sherlock's got the natural advantage, but my unwarranted exposure to dramatics master villains has been a helpful learning tool.

'John? My hot beverage of scorched fermented leaves of _Camellia_ _sinensis_ and refined saccharides with a dash of—'

'Tea is coming! Cut it out, Sherlock!' I promise precociously, as the machine took my money but won't to do anything now.

From the waiting room I hear muttered triumph: 'I'll count that as a win for me, shall I?'

What? No! I wasn't playing, I—

The local inspector returns with a gaunt edge to his expression as he waves us on to follow him to the crime scene. I'll bet he heard a long list of _do's_ _and_ _don't do's_ from Lestrade, useful when dealing with Sherlock Holmes.

'Mister Holmes', he starts.

'And doctor Watson', Sherlock interjects naturally, without even acknowledging me at his side. I vaguely wonder if one day Sherlock catches himself adding my name and title when he's, in fact, alone. I guess I won't ever know. Unless Lestrade snitches on our friend.

'You say you saw a corpse by the train tracks?'

'No, I don't say that at all.'

'But you said—'

'I saw flying apex predators circling the skies above a specific location, deeper in an embankment, and I did not have a straight line of sight to the dead person.'

'Could have been a stray dog or a fox, Mr Holmes.'

The detective shakes his head. 'Too many corvids about. They are highly intelligent creatures too. They wouldn't waste their times in high numbers to only grasp a snatch of food. No, this was no fox. At least not just one.'

The inspector tries his best to keep his cool, but I can tell he's dismissed us as excitable city folks already.

'DI Lestrade says it's easier just to let you have it your way and be done with it. So we're taking one of the cars. Can you tell is the general location of your "crime scene", Mr Holmes?'

'I can give you the specific GPS coordinates, the estimated above sea level altitude and the exact time of the spot event.' Sherlock strains a tight smile. 'I'm a trained detective.'

The inspector shrugs, hardly impressed. 'I spend all day surrounded by detectives, I know what you're all like. Come along, let's see if we can find your roadkill...'

Sherlock glances my way, looking absolutely shocked, as soon as the local inspector dashes off ahead of us.

'We should send Lestrade a Thank You gift, you know', I point out, solicitous.

'I wouldn't be so sure', the detective retorts, grumpy. 'Lestrade has clearly failed to impress this colleague with the incredible gift my genius is to the force.'

_**.**_

Sherlock's mood did not age well with a backseat ride on a clearly marked police vehicle. People on the local narrow winding streets would all turn their heads and sternly follow the passing police car. For once, I missed London's big city anonymity.

By my side Sherlock soon dropped the angry glare – more suited to actual caught criminals – and replaced it with a superiority attitude, full of high cheek bones, upturned collars and raised chin. He's one heartbeat away from discreet waving at the crowds like the Queen.

I try to ignore all that but my phone's battery dies on me, at the worst time it feels. Caught between Indignant and Awkward, I'm internally groaning in my own seat.

'John. The writing apparatus is more potent than the fencing essential.'

I actually groan. _Not here... _but can't help myself.

'Did you mean "the pen is mightier than the sword"?'

'Of course, John. Thought I'd give you a chance to catch up. Knew you'd get writers references right.'

'Oh, did ya?' I challenge.

Smugly, he claims: 'I know my blogger well enough.'

The foreign inspector is looking like he thinks we're just nuts.

Guess he's cleverer than I gave him credit.

_**.**_

My friend may be a great investigator, but when it comes to translating quickly ascertained coordinates and reading landmarks on the terrain, I'm this impromptu trio's specialist. After all, I'm the trained soldier. In no time we ditched the patrol car and made our way cross terrain through fields of wheat. I lead the way in decisive steps, leaving no room for arguments in the ranks. Sherlock follows like a stiff bodyguard figure, easily keeping up with the march. The local inspector is out of breath and probably inwardly cursing Lestrade, as he follows in the back.

We find a dark silhouette huddled in the embankment, just like Sherlock predicted. As we come near, a flock of birds – taking advantage of nature's free gifts to help them bear through the incoming winter – takes flight in anguished cries of protest.

I'm the first to crouch and check for pulse, even if the presence of those pecking birds has clearly stated the death. There's nothing we can do for the grey tinged old man in ragged clothes.

The inspector lets out a muffled operation as he recognises the dead body.

'He's the farmer. These are his fields.'

Sherlock points out, briskly: 'John, the knee.'

I frown as I ponder the awkward angle. 'He broke his leg, but there's no swelling, no significant bruising. His face is red, multiple capillaries broken at skin's surface, swelling on the feet but not just at the soles as if he'd been up for hours. No, I'd say heart attack. The knee gave as he toppled over. Out here in the middle of the empty fields, there was no way he could have got help in time.'

'And the local scavengers took advantage of the free meal', Sherlock finishes with no emotion.

'Poor man. Died alone.'

'Death is always a lonely business, John, an experience made for one.'

I glance at Sherlock, wondering how can he be do callous that he won't allow the one moment of consideration – when I see his eyes widen in shock. I follow his gaze.

There's a slime trail on the edge of the nearby stream. The small manmade irrigation canal is just a well dug ditch where the water flows freely in a bed structure full of algae residue. I could expect a multitude of small mammals to take advantage of this convenience, from otters to badgers, that being accustomed both to land and water could leave trail marks on the sloped banks. But the slightly iridescent gleam of the slime trail, too wide to be a water snake and too significant to have been a struggling frog meal to a heron, leaves me a bit perplex.

Sherlock and I are both city folks. There could yet be a perfectly logical explanation for this. That it reminds us of an old acquaintance – Octie – could be the rarest of coincidences.

Really, we cannot be finding traces of a deep sea creatures among cultivated wheat fields, can we? It's frankly impossible!

I'd ask Sherlock, but he hates that word – _I__mpossible_ – and will deny it as a knee jerk reaction.

He'll take _Improbable _instead.

The detective reacts with cautious moves, bending his lanky frame to reach the slimy mud and collects a few samples.

'John, I hope you had the foresight of packing my microscope.'

Ah! I smile victoriously. He finally admitted. He knows I'm the one packing for him.

However I frown quickly. I didn't pack the microscope. It really doesn't get used quite as much as that.

_**.**_

'Remember that case we had? And saving Octie and her pups? Remember how it went? I thought she was going back to the high seas, Sherlock. We saved her so she could go home.'

Sherlock glances my way, across the table at a local busy pub.

'We saved Octie so she could be free.' He then shrugs. 'What she did afterwards was always up to her. And may I remind you that giant octopuses like Octie are understudied and it's thought they have a vast geographical area of influence, that they travel along their life cycles?'

'We found her on the Thames, having babies. The Thames is a tidal river around London. But here? How many miles are we from the sea? It must be fresh water only around here. It's being used for crops!'

Sherlock nods, conspiratorially. 'And yet we are not far from the coast, and our cold murder case.'

'Missing person's case', I correct automatically.

'Something like that', Sherlock dismisses, unbothered. 'Octie could have travelled this distance, or indeed one of her descendants, if desperate enough. The fresh water provides less buoyance, thus increasing the chances to remain unnoticed.'

'Or this could be some other animal altogether.'

Sherlock nods, because he prides himself to be an open-minded investigator, but looks very unconvinced.

'What we need, John, is a replacement microscope.' And he gets up, ruthlessly ignoring his pint. Nothing is ever welcome to foggy his reasoning during a case. 'Come, John, we must put wrongs right if we are to find the right path.'

I get up, tense.

'Octie is not a murderer', I defend, tense.

'She's also not a scavenger. And there were no marks on the farmer's body consistent with a fatal interaction between them.'

'So she's got nothing to do with the murder!'

'Oh no, John. Au contraire. She's a witness, potentially about to be framed for a murder she didn't commit.'

'She did the last time. Commit murders, I mean.'

'Self-defence, we ascertained. Mother instinct, to protect her pups.'

'You really aren't bothered, are you?'

'I seem to have a soft spot for righteous murderers', and he winks at me. 'Come, John. We must find and protect the giant octopus. Come!'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	20. Chapter 20

_A/N:__ Octie returns plotline. I'm making it up as I go along. Thanks for the patience__. -csf_

* * *

_**3rd.**_

'_The_ _Suffragettes_, you said?'

'No, John. _The_ _Sulphurgettes_. A jazz band comprised of female scientists.'

I hum, appreciatively. We're on a boring stake out for a mythical sea creature we once had the serendipity of getting to know. The prompt was creating music band names, with a science twist. That last bit was the only way I could get Sherlock interested in the game. 'And _The_ _Sulphurgettes'_s biggest hit?'

'It's called _Resilience Blues_. You know, due to the ubiquitous nature of sulphurous bacteria, that can withstand extremes of heat and pressure, being found in active volcanoes, for instance.'

I blink. Trust Sherlock to take any challenge seriously, even an innocuous pass-the-time game.

'Alright, you can have that one. Got any more?'

'Hundreds, John. I'm a certified genius._ The Chained Hydrocarbons._' Our gazes cross complicit, his is alert mine and mine is open. 'Heavy metal, of course. Although in fairness, hydrocarbons on their own do not include metals, heavy or otherwise. John, it really loses its humour when I have to explain...' He presses his lips, vaguely annoyed. I want to chuckle at his antics, but he'd definitely take it the wrong way.

'Fine, fine. It's all fine.'

'And what gave you got, John?' he dares me, his eyes flashing.

'I've got movement', I call out.

'That's just a random name now, John.' Sulkily, he crosses his arms in front of himself.

Sunnily, I try not to chuckle.

'No. There! Through the side window, I can see movement.'

'Finally!' Sherlock hisses, triumphantly.

_Hey, we were playing a nice game, don't act so excited! You're the one who banned all traditional board games!_

'Is it Octie, though?' I wonder. We're hiding inside a decaying barn, isolated all around for miles of open fields. Night has just fallen on this isolated stretch of agricultural land and its darkness blankets the ground in soft hues while millions of starts light up the firmament above us in a pure and crystalline sparkle that the gelid night only enhances.

'I don't know', Sherlock admits, distractedly. 'How do you take fingerprints of an octopus?'

'Huh?'

'You don't', he answers himself. 'But you can study the next best things; footprints and ashes be damned! We've got tentacle trails on fresh mud and a fresh slime trail on the crime scene!'

'That hardly proves it's the one giant octopus we know, the one that once saved your life.'

'Worry not, John, I'll always trust you with my life.'

I blink. _What? I'm not jealous!_

'I really rather you didn't constantly put yourself in danger because of that trust.'

'Modesty becomes you, John, but is so dreadfully trifle, wouldn't you say?' he ignores me easily, getting up in predatory moves of his own, storming stealthily out of the old barn.

He knows I'll always have his back. Even at the expense of a good telling off once it's all said and done.

I get up, a bit more noisily as my joints crack from long inactivity, just waiting. As soon as I reach the open cold night air, I find that I cannot locate Sherlock. He's vanished into thin air, apparently. Only movement now comes from the small stream's mist. An odd smell of shellfish and decaying algae spreads alongside the scent of ripe wheat. An incongruity that tingles at my senses, already on high alert.

'Sherlock!' I hiss in the dead still night.

I jump as something brushes up my trouser leg. Before I turn my head to look I've cocked my gun and trailed it on the strange presence. Even in the nocturnal darkness I sense no danger in the unabashed presence of a eerily ivory coloured long winding tentacle tip, nipping at the cuff of my jeans like a pet. It doesn't seem aware of my drawn gun or the danger it poses. Certainly one bullet might not be enough to kill a giant octopus, particularly if I shoot off one of the tentacles of the multi-limbed creature, but it's more than that. This creature is all powerful and does not fear a mortal man with his toy metal contraption.

_I doubt Octie remembers me,_ I decide as I put away the gun. She's a creature of the wild, returned to freedom. Not a house pet.

She's certainly big and imposing, I remember. Not fully in sight yet, she's as long as the length of a car and her tentacles as thick as a loaf of bread, tapering at the ends, covered with tentacles on the underside. The head is a formless lump with big, dark, gelatinous eyes and a piercing gaze.

At least that's what I assume from previous experience, just before that tentacle softly curls at the top, incitingly contracting and releasing like a pulsing heartbeat, calm, quiet, tantalising. The colour morphs into darker hues of teal and sage and silver, ebbed in that ivory storm, not translucent enough to see the circulatory system under the slimy skin and not opaque enough to have it look as heavy as one of those tentacles must weigh.

I need to remind myself that poison runs under that hauntingly beautiful surface.

She gracefully curls and unfurls that one appendix, whilst slowly slithering away over the muddy surface of the water course's embankment. Of course, she wants me to follow her.

As if it was the most natural thing to do I bend down and grab that tentacle tip. Could have been a handshake of sorts, but I never force any movement on an unsocialised creature of beauty and the deep seas. I let her lead me.

That long tentacle slithers its way back with me, holding my hand.

In the semi-darkness I can tell it has emerged from the canal muddy waters, just the other side of a fallen tree trunk full of moss and lichens.

'_John!'_ I'm being called, and I hesitate for I recognise my friend's voice. I'm about to answer when I can tell a change in tension on the strong tentacle limb. It quickly encircles my wrist, twisting around it and tightening like a vice. I squeal a protest that falls on death ears, just before I'm yanked forcefully forward.

_**.**_

_I get kidnapped way too many times._

'You were not kidnapped, John. I can prove it, if you will only open your eyes. Also, you are talking without being fully conscious yet. It's unadvisable.'

I open my eyes, following Sherlock's instructions with a careful repeated blink.

'What – what happened?'

'I have successfully expelled most of the water from your lungs, John. You are now in considerably less danger, but hypothermia is a possibility to consider alongside dry drowning which statically may happen if you have yet any water in your lungs.'

'What?'

I'm confused. I look around. Sherlock is kneeling by the edge of the canal, the detective has irretrievably ruined another tailored suit. He must be freezing cold. I realise I'm deathly cold.

'I found you unresponsive, face down in the muddy waters. John, I— Don't do that again.'

I take a shaky hand to my forehead. 'Must have tripped on my own feet. Octie was here. She was leading me on. There must have been something she wanted me to see.'

'John... I found you unconscious. Dangerously positioned. And there's nothing here. Where was she leading you?'

I blink and focus hard on my friend's well-known face. He comes into focus a bit better.

'Are you saying Octie attacked me?'

He presses his lips thin, making a decision to evade a clear answer. At least for now. He won't be able to hold himself back some day soon, when he has more evidence to paint a clear picture.

'We must go to that infernal B&B the inspector mentioned. You are in no state to investigate tonight, John. A rest and a warm room will do you wonders', he promises me, helping me up.

_**.**_

'I thought you said "no investigating".'

'I meant you, not me, John. Obviously.'

'Obviously', I repeat, sarcastically.

'Give me your hand, John.'

I grump away at the investigator in full swing:

'My, how romantic!'

Sherlock looks up from my magnifying glass, poised an inch over my redeemed skin. He looks utterly confused, than a bit hurt, and finally he clasps his fingers like claws over my forearm with his free hand, demanding my cooperation.

_**.**_

I've got a very interesting pattern of blistering and swelling, he said. I seem to be allergic to cephalopods, he mentioned in passing. No, I could not go get some sleep, he insisted, imperiously. Apparently I need to be awake to answer the questions a muted detective won't ask.

I'm his sidekick still, but also his walking, talking piece of evidence. Sherlock Holmes must be thrilled. He's used to my compliance and just about using me as a doormat. Studying evidence has just become so easy...

I just want to lie under the covers for a couple of hours.

'Sherlock, it can't have been Octie! She wouldn't have attacked me!'

The transfixed investigator raises his grey eyes straight to my face.

'Your loyalty has not wavered. It's commendable, John. But you must remember Octie is confused, chased out of her home, apt to defend herself suddenly to minor perceived threats.'

I chew on the inside of my cheek before I blurt out: 'Octie is suffering from PTSD? Is that your deduction?' I shake my arm free from the stunned investigator. Sherlock pulls himself together enough to tell me:

'I'm not sure, John. But I know for sure that if she wanted you dead, that's how I would have found you.'

His eyes are trembling with unconcealed fear.

Octie makes a formidable adversary, for sure.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	21. Chapter 21

_A/N: Still not an octopus. Could be quite useful. I bet they're great at multitasking at work. Need that done today? Just give it to my third arm on the left. Not urgent? My eighth arm will take it. Oi, that's my stapler you're taking, better bring it back! -csf_

* * *

_**4**__**th**__**.**_

Someone knocks at the B&B's door. I waddle through thick water vapour mist, before I wrap myself in my bathrobe from the bathroom door. Cross the tiny room and go meet those familiar but unexpected knocks.

'Greg!'

The friendly Scotland Yard inspector's honest muggy grin awaits on the other side of the door.

'John! Nice to see ya, mate.'

'What's up? Did Sherlock put you up to this?'

'As a matter of fact, yes. _Giant octopus_ were his exact words. Never a _please_ or _if you're not swamped by cases the genius deems too boring to take_. No, Sherlock said _giant octopus _and _uncooperative local inspector._'

I sigh. Sounds like our friend, alright. I shrug, as I turn on the complementary kettle in the room, so I can offer Greg something like tea for his trouble.

'Sherlock also mentioned you, John', the inspector admits, still eyeing me attentively. He's got a good heart, Greg.

'And you've come all this way because of a giant octopus and me? You shouldn't have. I'm a soldier, I can take care of myself. Besides, I've got Sherlock', I add in earnest.

'Yeah, soldier', Greg agrees with some awkwardness. He doesn't want to point out that years of overseas experience fighting enemies in sandy landscapes did little to keep me from drowning yesterday. 'Bet that comes in handy often, but a giant octopus? What did you do, did you show it your medals?' he jokes, lightly.

I feel my cheeks redden. I just about keep my cool, I surmise silently with shifty eyes.

'Medals? Who said anything about medals?'

'Our boy Sherlock. I've seen them, John. He—' The inspector stops and his smile breaks. 'Right, he nicked them. Sherlock nicked them. He is a bloody kleptomaniac! Just like my badges!'

'No, no, I make him give you those back', I say, appeasing. 'I'd have lended him my medals. You know Sherlock has weird ideas about personal property anyway.' I gesture vaguely. I'm proud of those medals, of what they stand for. But out here, in the civilian world, people see pressed metal and colourful ribbons and imbue them with romanticized meaning. Out here, they don't mean to them what they still mean to me.

'Gosh, John, he didn't use them to his advantage or anything', Greg starts sharply. I look up, startled. The inspector assures me: 'Even Sherlock has got some decorum on a war veteran's service medals. Mrs Hudson was there too, I think. It was 221B. He just showed us your medals. At least, I think they were yours. He said they were.'

I shrug. 'Sherlock is a detective. If anything, living with a detective is a forfeit to any right to privacy, even more if the detective is Sherlock ruddy Holmes.' I turn to hide a proud smile. _Can't keep a secret from Sherlock._ It once used to annoy me. A man should have a right to privacy. _Now I realise I'm never alone._ It should be spooky, but no – it's comforting and endearing, if in a creepy manner.

'So – that octopus. What did it do to you?' Greg asks, as he takes in the steaming cup of tea. Before his words vanish into silence he lays his eyes on my bruised and blistered wrist. 'Blimey.'

'It's tender, but not painful. I think she just wanted me to follow her, but she got startled.'

'_She?_ The octopus is a _she?'_

'Naturally, Greg. We've met her before, in London.'

'We're nowhere near London.'

'Yeah, that's not a good sign, is it?'

'As a doctor taken a good look at that injury?'

'I'm a doctor', I remind him, tersely.

'You could have broken bones or poisonous toxins in your blood.'

'Nah, Sherlock doesn't think so. Octie is a proficient killer.'

Greg squints. 'Prolific too.'

'Justified.'

'Was she? Was that before or after you named her as one would name a pet? She's a beast, not a pet, John. Look at the state of you!'

I roll my eyes and a confrontation is narrowly avoided by the London detective storming into my room as if it was the habit of a lifetime.

They're all ignoring I'm still wrapped in a bathrobe.

'Ah, John, good, you're awake!'

I grimace; why would he want to barge into my room if I wasn't awake?

In a flurry of activity he totally ignores Lestrade, probably just to annoy the DI. _It works every time._

Shaking my head slightly I go make Sherlock a cup of tea too. This is how we roll; Sherlock is high, frenetic lightning storm energy released in bright flashes, whereas I take the back seat and ground him with homely gestures, make sure he eats, drinks, takes off his beloved wool coat – he could forget about it and collapse into bed with his coat still on, except Sherlock wouldn't go to bed, he'd fall asleep atop his microscope, his laptop, and once over a cage with an anaconda (Sherlock claimed he was keeping the anaconda warm in the cold warehouse; don't ask).

Meanwhile, the younger detective is fretfully unwrapping a brown paper package at the small desk. I come closer to hand him his tea. Sherlock's green eyes sombre down as they flutter a glance over my injured skin.

What? I'm left-handed, do I need to start doing everything with my right hand now? Will everyone stop being so touchy?

He sips the tea, and waves away my solicitous offer of a coaster so not to mark the wooden desk. On second thought he gracefully unfurls like a lanky cat, grabs the coaster and sits back at the desk having pocketed the coaster.

Kleptomaniac, yep.

I move away with a tight smirk.

Soon the two investigators launch themselves into elaborate theories and counter theories after the facts. I discreetly grab my bag and take to the small bathroom to get properly dressed. If I don't there's a chance Sherlock will grab me and try to dash out the door to investigate the flimsiest crazy deduction of the moment.

_**.**_

'Where did you get that microscope, Sherlock?'

He smirks to himself, that little tell-tale victory sneer that is pure and innocent, as he anticipates that once again he's managed to captivate my curiosity like a master of ceremonies in an elaborate act to impress me. My attention still a gift he can summon on request.

'It was sent to me', he answers, indolent.

'Mycroft?'

'Let's not spoil the mood by mentioning bad words; no, not my infuriating brother.' Then he glasses his gaze ahead, perplex. 'Don't really think my brother owns a microscope. Although half of a Greenwich telescope belongs to him. Don't know which half. He won it in a bet with a foreign oligarch. No, this microscope was sent to me by a scientist of sorts. He's a knighted documentary maker, or something, I'm not sure, I don't know why I should care, I've always refused a knighthood myself...'

'You asked _him_ for a microscope?'

'_Ask _is a stretch. I'll return it once I'm done, John.'

'You're just messing with me now.'

'Am I?' he taunts, that old smirk squirming his lips.

I sigh and gesture a polite request to have a look at what he's studying under that microscope. Looks like a sample of some viscous liquid to me. I return a befuddled look to my friend.

'That is slime produced by the creature that attacked you, John. I collected it at the scene.'

'I thought you saved my life at the scene', I snap. It comes across awkward.

'Multitasking, John! Told you before, John, I'll solve your murder if it comes to happen. You're my best friend, isn't that what friends are supposed to do?'

I chuckle at his fake naïveté.

_**.**_

Sherlock needs a sample from the scene of the crime to compare the slimy evidence with. He's trying to establish whether it really was Octie – or if we're dealing with multiple octopuses, I suppose.

'Are you sure you're okay with this, John?' the inspector asks, looking uncomfortable himself.

I look around on the cold sunset, the vast sweep of dying daylight ghosting the fields of wheat. It feels like a regular cold evening, suspended life hibernating for another night.

'Yeah, sure. Why ask, Greg?'

'Mate. It hasn't yet been a full day since you almost drowned here, at this spot, attacked by a giant mythical creature. You're not even breaking a sweat.'

I shrug. Noticing that does not go down well with Greg, I add: 'I don't remember any of it.'

Sherlock shakes himself up like a dog with a flea, before gesturing over the peaceful stream.

'It happened here, John', he narrates by deduction. 'Your struggle with Octie. She would have been a formidable adversary, battling in her own turf. At first you went willingly, guided by innocent curiosity and compulsive trust.' Sherlock is pacing along the margin pointing at steady footprints. 'Here. A deeper imprint, from your heel. You were balancing back. Ergo, she was pulling you forward. Unwanted advance, no prior signs of hesitation; the mood shifted suddenly. You are a capable fighter with a compact built, she must have employed not only a surprise attack but considerable strength. She overpowered you, there's a struggle in shallow water. Why wouldn't you get up, push her away, run for safety in the higher ground where she was at a disadvantage? Ah, there!' Sherlock bends and picks up a jagged edged rock from the cold stream. He brushes his fingers on the dark grey surface and rubs his fingertips together. He can't repress a visible shiver. 'Gold, oat, taupe, turmeric, and strands of silver.'

'What?'

'Dirty blond, they call it. Although I believe you fall into the average number of washes for a regular male.'

'My hair?' I surmise, surprised. 'And you've noticed the colour of my hair? I'll be damned...' I add, amused. 'You haven't, however, noticed it's going grey now.'

'These are some strands of your hair, John', he points out, almost in a hiss. 'On this rock where you hit your head. Your _blond_ head.'

I raise my hand mechanically. My fingers explore a nice lump on my scalp, never realised it was there before. I look up at Sherlock, awed.

'I must say you're fitting the blonde naïve stereotype very well right now, John.'

'Sherlock...' I warn with a glare.

He proceeds, not acknowledging me:

'If she really was out to get you, she needed to keep herself near water, her natural medium. We know by previously observed slime trails that she can withstand some time on land, partially submerged or entirely on ground, but her advantage is the water, where her movements are coordinated, precise, _lethal_. In water she is fierce, free, powerful, John!'

I rub my face for a moment.

'You are saying she sees me as a land creature.'

The detective smirks. 'You're anything you put your mind to, don't let anyone tell you otherwise', he offers me the brilliant positive affirmation. It makes me smirk. 'But yes, two legs, no tentacles? Perhaps she saw on you her nemesis, the one creature that can defeat her kind, not through physical prowess or cunning adaptations, but underhanded devices and ploys she cannot understand. Revenge is a possible motive.'

'Revenge does not equate with surviving. She had taken refuge here, hiding and cowering away from humans, why waste precious energy attacking me? And that farmer?'

'Perhaps she is _confused_, John.' His sombre, dry retort seems to imply that I am as well, for defending Octie against all evidence.

_**.**_

'John, let me say you are very flippant about a near death experience.'

His words travel the crystalline silence of the fields we scrutinise, standing side by side. The inspector has moved away in his own investigation of the scene – more accordingly official guidelines than Sherlock's, I'd assume – leaving us a few minutes of privacy.

I scrunch my face and turn to Sherlock. _It wasn't that bad, was it?_

My friend and saviour looks warily back to me. _Jeez, he makes it look really bad._

Can't remember a thing. The whole incident feels weirdly detached. As if it had happened to someone else, far away.

'Thanks', I say out loud, in case I haven't said it before. And I am thankful, I just don't feel like I've actually gone through it.

For his part, he has made every effort not to leave my side, even recruiting Greg to drop by and check up on me when he finally did.

_Never alone again._

'If you ever put me through that again, John, I'm never letting you out of 221B again.'

_He's going overboard with the whole kleptomania streak now._

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	22. Chapter 22

_A/N: Hi. Sorry I'm late (what an understatement). Slightly different chapter for I had to set the plot's drive. Still playing with Octie, the octopus._

* * *

_**5ft.**_

Sherlock wouldn't say it straight to me. His green eyes were sombre and streaked with worry, caution, even guilt, in ways I would have never wished on the brilliant man that is my best friend. He just couldn't put it to words. As if in doing so he was sealing an ill fate over me. And he couldn't bear that. He felt responsible, somehow.

Yet, in unspoken loyalty, he could not leave me without knowing. And, as often is the case with Sherlock, it was a matter of keeping my eyes open to the little gifted easy deductions and observations left out for me to find. Sherlock often plants them about.

I get this sense that I only grasp a small portion of his little hints, that he man who society views as enigmatic and cunning is so often open and extroverted, he just has a _different_ _language_ from all of us. He won't speak overtly of his feelings, he despises his vulnerability, but lets his actions betray him near me. He refuses to tell me how his day has been, but indulges me with sufficient clues left about in 221B (in his mind he does, at least) for me deduce it. He won't talk about feelings but let's his actions speak volumes about his preoccupation over this army veteran.

Sherlock has not told me a thing about his findings over the octopus' attack on me.

He has not kept me from any of his findings and deductions either.

The first clue Sherlock left me was the microscope. He knows I'm a man of science too. I came round his room to check up on him, but he just wasn't there. Only the set up microscope. As I leaned over the objective I was sure nothing new could be found at the bottom of the lenses. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Iridescent, translucent animal cells smeared on a glass slide, tucked under a thin glass cover. I adjust the magnification, bringing the image into sharper focus. There is a plain but deep eerie beauty to their multifaceted hues. So alien, so intangible.

Octie might have acted unexplainably as a fierce adversary, but there is something about this magical, impossible creature that keeps luring me in. As if it held all the secrets of the universe in itself. As if she were a cryptic expression of an evolved life form warning mankind to carefully select and edit its path.

I remove Sherlock's unmarked slide from the microscope – unlabelled as the genius wasn't bothered, or anonymous as a careful measure to keep our favourite eight limbed criminal unknown to others? – and find the next slide. Oh, grim. This one's marked carefully: JHW.

I don't remember giving my mad friend a sample for him to study.

Scrap that; multiple samples. Several on the table.

There are at least half a dozen JHW microscope slides. A little bit obsessive, no? That's Sherlock alright...

I adjust the focus and pierce down the eye piece in the absence of my mad friend. Just some skin swab, nothing painful on harvest.

Well, then.

The great detective has got unscrupulous scientific habits, he really must be off his game if he's done a basic mistake like this. _Iridescence_. There's contamination on this sample.

Smirking at how annoyingly easy it us to throw the greatest mind of our time into a tailspin – i.e. every time I get hurt on a case – I grab the next sample. This one's marked; _saliva_. Was I drooling in my sleep? Never mind. Sherlock will be Sherlock. The ground rule is No Pain Involved, and that was respected.

I slide on the microscope with practised ease.

Ugh, contaminated too. Was Sherlock doing this on purpose? Was he rubbing samples together in the hopes on learning something catastrophically new?

I toss the slide aside, it clicks against the table's wooden surface. I grab the next sample a prolific, overprotective genius had to collect as a pacifying ritual.

This one says _blood_ _sample_. Good grief. Sherlock's a ruddy vampire.

I gaze at the slide with suspicion. It really seems untampered with. I decide to trust it, in the conspicuous absence of the detective. Mount the slide on the microscope...

It's lit up more than a Christmas tree, reflecting and expanding the light from the microscope. _Iridescent_. Healthy blood cells mingled with slick colourful hues.

Right. I'm turning into a mermaid.

_Merman_, my distracted mind supplies.

_What the hell is bloody going on here?_

_**.**_

I received Sherlock's first text not even twenty minutes ago.

**Your services are required. Morgue. -SH**

I'm terribly sorry. I'm a bit busy. Freaking out because my blood is a multicoloured teenager's dream right now.

I've bit my lip and smeared a red, harmless looking sample on a free slide. Place it on the stage and look down on it.

Okay. My blood cells never looked like that before. _Or anyone else's._

Maybe it's not that bad.

_Okay, it is._

Procedural error. Something's wrong with the microscope.

Empty slide. Clean. See through. Nothing special.

My lip is bruising. Never mind. Try the slide again.

I'm a freaking mermaid.

It's true. My blood has changed.

A cold clammy fear washes over me, and I don't believe it's the manifestation of sea life in me just yet.

With trembling hands I pick up my phone.

Hands, not gills. Calm down.

**John, you are inexcusably late. -SH**

**The inspector is here already. ****-SH**

**If we end up barred from this morgue I'm holding you responsible, not my actions. -SH**

**John, I will not be ignored like this! -SH **

**Please answer me. -SH **

**Please talk to me. -SH **

**You've seen the samples, I presume.**

**Let's talk, John. -SH **

I nod to myself, take up the phone to my ear and wait with held breath as I hear the calling monotone rhythm on the line.

_**.**_

It's a cold, austere building, ringing of governmental regulations and the unhurried lifestyle of those associated with small towns and death. A sobering combination that a fat, old aged pathologist with a chronic cough and a smoking addiction veering on emphysema oversees with pragmatic detachment.

As I arrive, the local inspector is staring on with shock and revulsion barely concealed in his features. Greg is displaying his best "nothing to see here, move along" tight smile, also surveying the frantic consultant's activity. Sherlock is the epicentre of their attention. A mayhem flurry of investigative activity, manhandling the dead body on the cold slab to view him from all angles.

'Ah, John! At last!' he projects his warm voice as soon as I make my appearance but remains stoically engaged in research without even glancing my way.

It's Greg who comes over, with a worried fatherly glance over on me.

Do I detect a bit if tension in Sherlock's tight pale features before Greg pats me in the back and reels me in with a customary familiarity?

I see Sherlock's gloved fingers, nimbly studying tension and consistency, relax somewhat; but he still reminds me of a bird of prey, pecking and piercing his prize.

Sherlock's mind is in overdrive, determined as he is to solve this mystery of Octie's methods and goals. Determined to put me right.

_I don't know what is going on, but don't expect to turn into a were-octopus every full moon either._

'John.'

I glance at the detective again. He's all sharp contrasts of pale face, gaunt lines and sharp cheekbones, looming over the corpse.

'Yes, Sherlock?'

'Do call ahead to the client awaiting us somewhere. I've found a better case, one I fully intend to solve before long.'

_You're my case now, John, and I'm solving this._

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	23. Chapter 23

_A/N: Is there anybody out there? Asking for a friend. -csf_

* * *

_**6**__**th**__**.**_

Had a restless night, I did. Surprising? Yes. Not one of the usual type either. Instead of bright and sharp snippets of recombined war memories sneaking up on me on my unconscious state, I was a captive spectator of a collection of imaginative blurred colours, fluid shapes, probing feathered touches and nauseating vortices of movement. I was alone in a strange world I didn't recognise as my own, one that I was learning to assimilate by instinct and experiment. I felt restless, in accepting of a looming fate always undefined, but no less than discomfited by my happenstance location; I was floating in a strange world with a logic of its own, its machinations a secret from my prying eyes.

At one point my mind wandered over to the memory of my best friend. How come he wasn't a presence in that strange alien universe, how come he was so lamentably missing. For I know, without a doubt, that if Sherlock Holmes was there he'd be attracting all the attention and energy in the room to himself, with his magician-like abilities to dominate a strange, unreal setting, he'd make sense of it for me. And yet, Sherlock wasn't far off, of that I was sure, without ever knowing how, I just knew it. My consciousness could travel the flow of odd shapes and flowing, mingling colours, and seek my friend to connect with. I didn't, though. I didn't know Sherlock's colours.

Odd, freaky dreams. No wonder I woke up bathed in sweat and slightly out of breath.

'You're running a low fever, John. Otherwise you seemed perfectly healthy, if a bit restless.'

It's disconcerting to wake up to an unemotional medical diagnosis, precisely delivered with cold detachment.

Oh, yeah, and by the way Sherlock's just having a morning coffee and news in my bedroom at the B&B. Uncaring exposed as a slipping mask on the detective.

To be honest, being Sherlock we're talking about, this home invasion exercise actually rings pleasantly of familiarity, grounding me after the weird nightly excursions of my feverish mind.

I look on over to the window. Rain splatters diagonally across, against the cold window pane. It reminds me of the sea waves splashing against the shore.

'Sherlock, the case!' I splutter at once, raising myself from the damp, creased bedsheets.

'What case?' he asks guardedly. As if he had several he was working on in tandem. Knowing my friend, he probably does.

'The cold case? Remember we were on our way to the seaside to solve a cold case?'

He looks intrigued. 'Your sense of duty is a defining feature of your personality, sure, but there's no rush. It's a cold case. And you are ignoring a giant octopus attack on you, John', he adds, pertinently. Sternly he steels his avoiding gaze and assures: 'It's an affront to me as detective that you'd have me go to a cold case when event surrounding you are so deliciously entertaining. John, I—'

We're interrupted by the shrill sound of my phone ringing. With no qualms of privacy, Sherlock reaches out and takes the mysterious call. I try to grab my phone back. Predicting my gesture, Sherlock swings it out of reach.

'Lestrade? ...John's fine, John is always fine... He's right here in bed with me...'

I chuckle at what my dimwit flatmate is saying. I swear Sherlock went from_ "don't know how the rumours started" _to_ "I'll just outwit the rumours, shall I?" _in no time.

'Pass me the phone', I demand, crisply. Sherlock raises an imperious hand and twists away, getting up from his chair.

'No, John has been asleep all this time. I've been monitoring his sleep... No, I don't find it creepy, why should I?'

'Sherlock...' I warn, demanding my phone, palm held open in wait.

'Lestrade, I don't need a medical degree to watch John sleep.'

'Sherlock!'

I push away the covers, swing my legs over the side of the bed and push myself upright.

Reality dutifully tilts over and I come crashing down on the hardwood floor like timber in a forest.

'John!'

I can hear the clatter my phone makes when hitting the floor.

_**.**_

I blink as the blurry room returns to its ugly sharp relief. Useless dust attracting knickknacks piling up at every available surface, as if poised to attack us with their kitsch aesthetics. I roll my head in the hardened pillow, seeking illusive comfort that just won't come.

Only then I notice Sherlock, curled up on an uncomfortable chair, near me. He was supposed to keep vigil but somehow exhaustion crept up on him and he's asleep. How he keeps himself folded so tightly, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around those lanky legs, all whilst his chest is softly raising and falling to the rhythm of his sleeping breaths, I have little idea. I make sure to keep quiet as I get up from the mattress, and slip my sock cladded feet into my shoes. In the same quietness, I reach for the door handle, twist it and leave the room, without even closing the door.

_It's a dream. _You don't need to close doors in dreams.

If this was reality, Sherlock would be awake. I'd be cold or sleepy, hungry or thirsty, perhaps.

A longing smell of sea fills me as I take a deeper breath. Those colours, soft mingling hues that rise like fog, envelop me slowly, swirling like tides, alluring like mysteries unsolved, iridescent turgid colours overwhelming my senses.

Soft ivory, peach tones. Non-threatening, peaceful, _familiar._ I follow their call.

In the back of my mind I keep the awareness of a calm, curious tide of sage and silver hues.

_**.**_

'_John.'_

I blink myself out my daze. 'Sherlock', I recognise. I've no jacket on, my shoes are untied, I have no recollection of the last... of a long while. 'How did _you _get me here?'

It's Sherlock's doing. It's always Sherlock's doing.

'John?' He seems taken back. 'John, I followed you here.'

Nice joke, mate! Now can we stop saying each other's names?

'Sherlock...' I breathe, impatient.

Apparently not. He hands me his beloved long coat, his features are harsher than I expected, and I know I must take it for now.

I wrap myself in the warm wool, knowing I'm a bit cold, a bit lost.

'John, you were mesmerized by some strange force, following invisible instructions. I saw you take decisive choices on which path to take, and you even climbed down reinforced steel steps embedded in the wall.'

'Where are we?' I ask after a suspicion filled glance around. Sherlock smirks at my sudden paranoid, much more a show of the John Watson he is accustomed to.

'Old water well catchment.'

I squint. 'Why?' I let my suspicions take over.

His eyes take a soft concerned approach. 'You tell me. I feared you might take a tumble as you entered this construction. You were determined as always. So I held back, monitoring you. I tried assuring I could keep you safe, hamper you if you fell, but you were very independent and ignored all my pleas, all my interceptions. You seemed to be navigating a world only you could sense. It was... terrifying.'

'I'm sorry', I say reflexively. He seems genuinely shocked, his eyes still a bit unsure, sunken on a pale face.

He shrugs wordlessly in the same instinctive answering.

I look around in the weird underground bunker. Again, Sherlock precedes me.

'It seems to have been a community spring well, John. Abandoned sometime in the 1910s going by the sunlight discoloration on what seems to have been non-arsenic-free wall paint.'

'Arsenic?' I look up. That shook me out of my daydream trance alright.

'Lead too', Sherlock adds, pragmatic. He takes a flake of the peeling paint and licks it, grimacing afterwards.

_Sherlock, in the name of all that is holy in science... stop licking the evidence!_

'Then what I saw...' I say instead.

This time Sherlock waits uncharacteristically patient, without interrupting or rushing me.

'Sherlock, I saw fleeting movements. Long tentacles flowing fluidly in the water.' I remember them now. They were my full attention, my only care in the world.

The detective looks sombre. 'Octie is slowly being poisoned by heavy metals, by absorption through the sensitive skin. She must leave this home. It might even be that the metals bleaching into the stilled waters are the reason for her aberrant behaviour when she attacked you, John.'

'Yeah, but—' I hesitate.

'What is it, John?'

'The tentacles I saw... curling and slithering in the water... they were not long. They belonged to infants.'

Sherlock glances into the dark tunnels.

'She's calling you, John. She's a desperate mother calling you to help her babies. John, this is fascinating.'

_Glad one of us thinks that..._ I think angrily, but I don't really mean that, I don't think. I'm just a bit freaked out right now.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	24. Chapter 24

_A/N: In the run up to Christmas, with the saccharine excess of old radio hits everywhere, here's what got stuck in my head: Sherlock has an anatomical heart model he pestered John to get him. He said it was for a case, but now he's very smug about it. Sherlock keeps telling everyone John gave him his heart for Christmas. That's a factual truth, I guess. John is very confused on how he got suckered into this one, and he never saw it coming. -csf_

* * *

_**7**__**th**__**.**_

'Come, John, let us explore!'

I look on the ominous claustrophobic space immersed in eerie darkness and swathed from the inside in spider webs, and a small dry gulp clears itself off my throat.

'No need to hesitate now, John. You were doing so well just a minute ago!'

I frown. 'According to you, I was sleepwalking just a minute ago.'

He nods in acknowledgement. Serious, solemn even, he particularises: 'I want to know what goes on in your head, John, when you are dreaming away. Lowered inhibitions, fluid subjects transported from reality and recombined into fantasy according to your truest expression of self. John, I want to what your dreams brought you tonight.'

I smirk in a very self-deprecating way. 'Can't believe there's more than war torn dreams my mind can supply?' I ask, sharply.

His expression breaks, too human, and immediately I look away.

'I was asleep, Sherlock. It's a bit too late now, mate. Am awake now.'

'No', he refuses to believe. The evidence based detective always keeps this faith that I can be extraordinary, even beyond normal human standards. 'Focus, John! The average human only uses ten percent of his brainpower.'

'Actually I think that's been discredited, take it from a medical professional.'

'There you go, arguing meaningless details...' he huffs.

I smile as he's obviously getting all worked up, and decide to indulge his request. I take a deep breath and close my tired eyes.

No, nothing there. Only utter darkness, singled in high relief.

'Focus, John', my friend whispers, full of faith in my unproven abilities. I can feel the warm hand he lays on my shoulder. It grounds me, pulls me from the momentary damp and uncomfortable location to some safe place I knew not I carried inside me.

'That's it, John. Breathe slowly.'

I nod and try to focus harder. Immediately I feel something fall away from my grasp, as if disappearing from a radar. I search for what I lost, what had been there at the back of my mind, present but silent. Lurching. Revolving like plumes of smoke and movement. I follow that presence, inexplicable and implausible, yet it becomes brighter, present. Not as strong as that connection with Sherlock's warm hand on my good shoulder, but just as real to me.

Maybe I'm feverish, hallucinating by wishful overthinking myself into detecting some conscious presence about us. If so, all I can say is... it's working.

Streaks of wisped smoke in pale colours reach out from a corner behind me. I turn, ready to walk on over. At once I feel Sherlock's other hand on my other shoulder. Keeping me on the beaten path, keeping me safe, as I venture forth, eyes closed, fixed mind on vague wisps of colour.

The rustle of Sherlock's faithful long wool coat keeps following our steady steps on the unknown tunnel. In the back of my mind I wonder how is Sherlock illuminating the path ahead of us in these tunnels, keeping us from the cold watery undercurrents by our feet, just off the narrow path. His hands on my shoulders, keeping a steady hold on me, and no way to hold up a torch. Maybe he too is following instinct – and a mind map of the place as he saw it before pocketing his torch lit phone.

I stop as a heavy scent of sea and decaying maritime algae hits us. This is it. Octie's lair.

Without opening my eyes I turn my face to my left, to the water embankment and beyond.

'Three.'

I can feel the twitch in the unsuspecting detective as I speak suddenly in the overwhelming silence.

'Three cubs, Sherlock', I particularise. 'Triplets, I suppose, but they are quite distinct.' In fact, I could assign their presences the colours that have been haunting me. Ivory. Sage. Pale gold.

Reminds me of the beautiful iridescence of Octie's near translucent, suckers spotted skin.

And Octie's colours? They seemed to shift according to inner whims, secret moods. Is that what I'm picking up here? Three different states of mind, all curiously focused on the two visiting strangers?

I hear a small gasp from my best friend, who never lets go of me.

'Oh, John', he sighs.

I open my eyes. Blink fast in the darkness ahead, pierced by a sharp hallo of light from Sherlock's phone, and gulp dry.

Two small octopuses swim in circles, chasing each other. A third pierces us with a suspecting glare from a jet black pupil. There is no sign of an adult about. Adult of the species, I mean.

On the margin, and we've almost been stepping on it, leftover seaweeds, small mammal bones and other indistinguishable remains. They are dry and worn, as if old gifts from the mamma octopus to the little pups.

_We've been called as babysitters, haven't we?_

Octie is in distress, or worse, and this little ones have no one else but us.

I saw Octie just yesterday, she was alive, but cunningly hiding as if guilty or distrusting. Why hasn't she come back to her young ones? Why has she led me - us - here instead?

I glance over my shoulder to Sherlock Holmes. Where I'm near catatonic he's mildly curious.

_**.**_

'We can't do it. We're humans, for heaven's sake!'

From his chair in the B&B in my room, Sherlock shrugs. 'Humanity is overrated.'

'What are we supposed to do, take them home with us?'

'I suppose that is the plan. Unless you cherish that much your independence.'

I glare at my friend and sip my comforting tea. I'm still feeling a bit off-colour.

_John Watson, babysitter extraordinaire?_

'What are you doing?' I ask, glancing at my friend.

'Social media. Conversing.' He never takes his eyes off his phone.

Squinting, I wonder: 'With whom?'

'John, is your handle "armydoctor221"?'

'Nooo—' I prolong, curious.

He looks up, stilling his fingers for a couple of seconds.

'Never mind, John.' He puts the phone away. 'Just harmless talk. I've deleted the thread, don't bother noseying... However, don't be surprised if someone shows up at Baker street, this guy knows my address.'

I blink, worrying about my innocent friend. Is the genius this naïve or is he making this up to redirect my attention?

'Sherlock, what have you two been conversing about?'

He shrugs, feigning distraction. 'Thought I was talking to you. He was as predicable as you, the whole thing seemed so legit.'

I let my brows knit in confusion. He's messing with me, isn't he? At least, I hope so.

'Sherlock, I've been under your sight all this time. I couldn't possibly have been chatting with you on social media!'

He looks genuinely disappointed.

'Predictable, as I said.'

'No need to resort to insults', I retort, gruffly.

He reacts, seemingly honest. 'I wasn't. It's one of your most comforting traits, John.'

_Now I know he's for sure mocking me, so with a sigh I file the whole incident away._

'And Octie's pups? What will we do about them?'

Sherlock smirks. 'Oh, please! You're too _predictable_ to warrant an explicit verbal answer from me.'

_**.**_

'High tech, huh?'

'John, sarcasm is a lower form of humour', Sherlock snaps. That succeeds in shutting me up indeed, mostly out of stock. You see, I recognise I can be a grumpy old git at times, but Sherlock – self-proclaimed sociopath – is usually incredibly patient with me. Sure, Sherlock can be a loud, abrasive jerk at the best of times, no matter who is in the room. But there's always a kinder, gentler streak to his ways, and he's rarely derisive in handling me.

I surreptitiously glance at my friend, therefore.

'You cold?'

He grumps something unintelligible under his breath about my grammar.

Of course he's cold. We're both currently standing in cold stagnated water inside a tunnel off a well, wellies and rubber trousers on to keep us dry, but I bet he's as chilled to the bone as I am. Cold hands hold buckets where we hope to attract and entrap the abandoned – hopefully not orphaned – octopus cubs.

Playing hide and seek, they are.

A bulbous head pops above water behind the lanky genius, just as a gelatinous tentacle unwinds sinuously behind my back. We both edge forward eagerly only to crash against each other's efforts.

'John, this isn't working', he protests, rubbing his shoulder.

Massaging my forehead, I kip: 'No, seriously?'

'Sarcasm, John', he warns me.

'I've got endless supplies of sarcasm, Sherlock, don't push me.'

He rolls his eyes. 'John, can't you... I don't know... talk to them?'

'Talk? What like? _Here, little octopus, come to daddy_?' I ask, bewildered.

'I don't know', he dismisses me with a waved hand. 'You're the one with the shared mental link or something.'

'Sherlock, I had a fever. It's all a coincidence. You're a scientist, certainly you don't believe I can read the mind of a different species.'

He smirks dangerously. 'You can read mine.'

'Yeah, lots of fun there, Smaug the Great.'

'Scientists keep open minds to formulate theories that explain the facts, they don't dismiss facts because they contradict the preponderant currents of thought, John; and who's Smaug?'

I fight the urge to rub my face with my hand. 'A dragon in a book, never mind.'

'Dragons...' he ponders. 'You really have a fantastic imagination, John, I wonder if that is why Octie chose you over me.'

'Choose you, Sherlock?' I'm surprised, he's jealous now. He's jealous because I'm the target of a mythical octopus. A murderess octopus, if that makes it any less weird. No, I suppose it doesn't.

'Naturally a possibility, of course', Sherlock defends. 'My mind being far superior and organised not to mention—'

'—the big head?'

'John, sarcasm?'

'I'm always sarcastic when I'm freezing my—'

'John!' he interrupts me, pointing at my bucket. I have neglected the simple contraption the great mind thought of. Now, looking down, there's a peacefully quiet, ivory toned, mini octopus frolicking in the container.

Sherlock hums, like he does when he's faced with a challenge he's willing to take. I think I can still hear him murmur under his breath: _teacher's pet_.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	25. Chapter 25

_A/N: John knew there was trouble when Sherlock wanted to borrow John's "least hideous jumper"._

_Sighing to the man who goes to gruesome crime scenes with crisp lines, expensive suits, as if he they were both necessary and disposable, John tries to keep his voice levelled when asking his friend why he needs one of his jumpers (forget the adjective)._

'"_Christmas jumper day" at the Yard, John. I need to wear a jumper apparently, just because Christmas is nigh. Don't know why. Maybe the heating is broken, Lestrade wasn't very forthcoming, he kept sniggering under his breath.' John sighs._

'_Maybe you don't really have to wear a Christmas jumper?'_

_Sherlock face falls at that. _

'_I indicated I would already.' He's picking up on something and John is sure his heart breaks a little at the thought of the genius putting the pieces together on someone's unintendedly cruel mocking on Sherlock's lack of knowledge on social conventions. Knowing Sherlock, he probably never held down a conventional job, not long enough to go through a Christmas jumper day, at least, and he wouldn't necessarily have picked up on such nonsensical custom on his own at Baker Street._

_John is sure Lestrade will pay for this._

'_We can wear matching Christmas jumpers, Sherlock, and I'll sock anyone who sniggers at us', John promises to his mate._

_He means it. -csf_

* * *

_**8**__**th**__**.**_

Back in the B&B, after avoiding careful scrutiny from the people running the place who already think Sherlock and I are_ very weird_ – _so true, in fact_ – the two of us get into another tight spot. This one being the tiny bathroom adjacent to my room.

_I think Sherlock's got a room of his own. At this point that is not an established point, given he spends his time hovering around in mine._

There is a residual mist in the air as the bathtub is filled with tepid (but not hot) water. Sleeves rolled high I carefully transfer bucket after bucket of toddler octopuses onto their transitional playpen.

I turn my head as I hear the squeaky trail of a finger over the foggy surface of the mirror above the wash stand. The detective with the curls frizzing and drooping due to the saturated humid atmosphere is writing a message on the mirror, for heaven's sake!

'They can't understand English, Sherlock, they're not enemy spies!' I protest.

He looks absolutely sidetracked for a moment. 'Oh, this?' Negligently he points to the mirror. 'No, I just felt like it. Do you mean, you never—'

I groan under my breath. No, I suppose I don't write secret messages whenever the bathroom mirrors are foggy. _I'm an adult, and so is he!_

'John, you are too responsible. You'll grow too old like that.'

I resist the urge to rub my twitching shoulder, thus proving I already am.

'Sherlock, I get it. Looks like fun. But we need to be responsible, be serious. How are we going to do this? For how long? Would we be better trying to pass these guys to London's aquarium?'

'An orphanage?' he reacts, sharply. 'I expected more humanity from you, John!'

_Sherlock has turned on his antics mode._

'Do you really see us managing to do this?' I check.

'Naturally, John. And Octie will return as soon as we solve her case.'

I frown, taken by surprise. 'Solve her case?' I repeat, blank.

'Naturally, John. You didn't think she'd just abandon get pups out of whim, did you? We're solving her case so she can reunite with her family.'

_**.**_

The quick repeat investigation into the dead farmer's fields was a surprising request from the consulting detective. We left soon after, having made sure the three little refugees were safely hidden in the small bathroom, and had by then worn themselves out frolicking in a whirlwind of bathtub water that now they peacefully slept, gently floating in the water (one darker, lead grey toned, with one eye open, glazed over but half-awake still, the other two harmoniously melting in intertwined jelly limbs of near translucent pearl undertones).

'We're cephalopod carers now, John, how intriguing', Sherlock comments, flipping his collar up to line up with his cheekbones.

I just my hands deeper in my jacket pocket, feeling a bit chilled too.

'Never had a pet octopus', I comment.

'They're not pets, John. They are creatures of the wild, and their likely mind power is higher than ours, going by brain size alone.'

'So is a whale', I comment.

'Ah, but whales don't have eight arms. Look at the potential within those three young creatures, John! If we could teach them, guide them...'

Oh, bother. Sherlock would be lethal as a parent, wouldn't he? _John, a toddler is the perfect test subject for my newly synthetized drug, their immune system is pristine and I can rule out other drug interactions! John, it wasn't theft, don't be boring, I just had the child cross the laser beams field in the museum to prove the object could indeed be stolen from that poor example of high security! John, it's Thursday, on Thursdays we speak French, and on Fridays we speak Portuguese, children can learn many languages at once, unlike you._

I sigh, feeling a bit worn out. The village is flowing according to its own rhythm around us.

'John, you look tired. Was this trip a bad idea?' my friend asks me softly, eyes on the street ahead, giving me enough privacy that I may actually answer truthfully.

'No. Not a bad idea, Sherlock. We are where we are needed and that is all that matters.'

'How very self-effacing of you', he comments drily. I don't think Sherlock believes in selflessness much. _He just acts on it all the time._

I guess you can't believe in what you don't want to acknowledge in yourself.

'So, what are we doing here?' I try to resume the purpose of our little excursion.

'There has to be a crime', Sherlock proclaims his conviction.

'Why?' I challenge that assertion.

'Because I'm a detective who won't have his time wasted, or because there's always a crime anywhere. Most importantly, because Octie is on the run, after having attacked a dying farmer.'

'He wasn't dying.'

'He wasn't all that healthy either. For all purposes and intentions, it was a killing, if not a murder. Octie must have been provoked.'

'Maybe the farmer got too close to her pups.'

'Possible, but unlikely, she would have moved them away quicker than the arthritic farmer's approach.'

'Revenge, then? From pollutants? We know she's acting crazy from the heavy metal absorption in the well walls. Maybe she thought the farmer was poisoning her family purposefully with his pesticides.'

'Good, John!'

'I got it?' I'm shocked, and a bit proud.

'No, of course not. But you are doing an splendid job at enumerating all implausible and improbable theories.'

I squint. 'But not impossible.'

'Nothing is impossible if one tries hard enough. Why, I can turn that farm tractor into a smoke machine if I try hard enough, for instance. All it takes is to operate it really badly until the engine catches fire.'

I chuckle. 'Why would you want a smoke machine?'

'Because we're being watched, John. And not by a cephalopod brain. There is definitely some strong secret buried here in this farm, deeper than the wheat fields.'

I cautiously glance over my shoulder. I see nothing untoward.

'You sure, Sherlock?'

'Yes. And thank you, John, for so dutifully alerting the voyeurs we're on to them. No, no, don't feel bad, it was part of my plan!'

I'm flabbergasted.

Sherlock's hint is minute but I'm so attuned to his peculiar behaviour that I can pick up on the tiniest tell, like a shared language. As one we start a sprint in unison, running towards the rundown barn at the edge of the field. A modest construction of a single ground floor and comprised of a single division, painted outside walls in a faded sickly colour. The wide door is closed shut, there are no windows we can see, and it looks all together decrepit, abandoned, unused.

As we approach the structure a loud crash echoes in the barren fields, that reveal a fugue flight of corvids up to the sky. The noise is coming from the back of the barn, and the sound of dry wood splintering and giving out is fractionally preceded by a motorcycle speeding off from the newly opened "door", that gaping hole on the back wall, from which some unknown individual is now sprinting away at high speed on a bike, and leaving behind a plume of smoke and raided dirt.

I slow down fractionally, stunned, take my hand to my waistband in my back, and grab my faithful gun. Sherlock glances at me. I aim and fire, but miss the tires because of the trail of dirt, clouding my vision... and making me cough and blink and look away, as I feel the dust debris hiting my face, such is the force they were propelled backwards against us.

'Sherlock?' I cough my friend's name, voice scratching painfully on my throat.

'John! Come in!'

'But the guy is getting away!' I protest feebly.

He shakes his head once, determined. 'We wouldn't catch him on foot. What matters now is what he came here for. And', he adds like a magician about to show his best act, 'what he left behind.'

I step further inside the barn, my eyes getting accustomed to the darkness inside. That's when it reveals itself. A monstrous metal construction, a masterpiece of airtight stainless steel in a closed, oblong shape, with a top hatch.

'That looks like a small submarine', I comment.

Sherlock nods gravely, his features chiselled in a daring smirk, and bright, amused eyes.

'What do we do now?'

'Oh, now? We play hide and seek. We take this spoil of war and hide it elsewhere until we find the deep waters it was meant to be coursing through.'

'Are you sure it's waterborne?' I look carefully at the sleek surface.

'Oh, yes', Sherlock assures me in his deepest voice, crouching by the structure. Then he looks me straight in the eye as he points a finger at a point lower in the metal structure. 'Octie's been fighting it.'

And sure enough there are faded prints of adult octopus suckers.

_**.**_

I feel well worn as we return to the B&B, the substandard replacement of our beloved 221B. A sort of 221B&B, if you will, where I'm hoping to wind down a bit to gather some more strength back. I won't let Sherlock know but I'm feeling really cold and tired.

The lock turns dutifully with the key, and I don't even question Sherlock's muted hovering just a touch too close to me, not anymore. I take the first few steps inside and halt, in shock. Sherlock halts as well.

'John, what have they done?' he whispers, taking the scene in.

It's a shocked look spreading over the normally composed detective. We stand side by side at the door of my small room, not daring to step inside much just yet.

There are soap bubbles floating from the open door of the adjoining bathroom. Beautiful, light, playful soap bubbles, drifting peacefully across the room. There are mucus trails all across the floor, the bed covers, the chest of drawers and the wall mirror (how?), leaving behind tiny suckers imprints. A globulous head sprouts at intervals from behind my travel bag on the floor and another very relaxed creature is sprawled tentacles wide atop an ugly picture on the wall, like an ominous, overgrown spider. From the ceiling fan above the bed the most riotous of the offspring swings from a paddle and swims around in what I assume is childish delight.

I slowly turn my head to Sherlock, still somewhat in disbelief of my own eyes.

'Oh, good, John! That's positively adorable, told you they wouldn't be boring!' his glee is shining through his words.

'What?' I hiss, wondering how to fix this mess.

'They are growing up to look more and more like you, John. Exciting and deadly.'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	26. Chapter 26

_A/N: __John walks in to 221B. He stops at the door frame, takes stock of the surroundings, and sighs audibly._

_Every single object in the cluttered living room has been expertly gift wrapped by some stealthy Christmas-themed wrapping-paper ninja while John had gone downstairs to Mrs Hudson for a cuppa._

_Sherlock saunters in from the kitchen eyeing his work appreciatively. 'Mind the Christmas cracker themed ones while you unwrap them, John', he comments, taking a sip of tea, before he turn and leaves._

'_Wait, why all this?'_

'_I was on a roll, John! You were right, gift wrapping can be a lot of fun!'_

_John is left alone, shaking his head and smiling. Sherlock knows him too well, knows just how to keep him on his toes. -csf_

* * *

_**9**__**th**__**.**_

'John?'

'Just a headache, Sherlock.' _A massive migraine, in fact. Setting in like a heavy blanket, weighing me down. I want to curl up in hiding, take my hands over my ears, shut my eyes tight and just block out the entire world until this horrid feeling goes away._

_Instead I steel myself and force a brave smile to my lips. Mustn't let Sherlock know._

The detective huffs, grumbling about the length of time "this inconvenience has gone on". Suddenly he twirls on the spot to viciously glare at the small octopus on a wet towel, sprawling over my stomach. I've lulled him to sleep at last. Wasn't an easy task. Now I'm reclined in a foreign armchair in 221B&B, with a contented sea creature resting against me. It's oddly peaceful.

I hear the click of a nearby desk lamp being turned off, in a lucky serendipity.

'What if he's poisoning you?' Sherlock asks me, very seriously. A note of concern in his voice, but I notice he's still asking me, the doctor in the room, for my advice. 'Is it safe that you are holding him?'

We've settled, without scientific evidence, that the rowdiest of the three younglings is a boy and the two quiet ones are girls. Although we can't tell apart any anatomical difference except for the deeper tones this one seems to favour exhibiting, while the quieter ones settle often for lighter tones.

'He's not poisoning me, Sherlock. You know this. I'm not even glittered up like a mermaid anymore, thank goodness for that! You tested my blood, you made sure, you nutter. Under false pretence, I may add.'

'Did you really believe me?' he's surprised.

'Not really, no.'

Sherlock scrunches his face.

'And yet you let me?'

'I trust you.'

He twirls again, this time walking away as he grumbles under his breath.

_I'll always trust Sherlock._

Suddenly I part the small creature from me, jump off the chair and rush to the small bathroom, banging the door behind me.

'John?'

My last glance of Sherlock finds him holding up a confused octopus in his arms as I'm about to be very sick.

_**.**_

'John, are you better?'

My friend keeps asking me this, every two minutes, like a lost child, completely ignoring the absurdity. Yes, I'm better, but it's by incremental improvements. Overall, I'm still feeling a bit like crap.

'I'm perfectly fine now', I lie, straight-faced.

Sherlock squints. 'Never noticed just how green you normally were, John', he comments, straight-faced.

He turns away and I almost sigh in relief. Have enough on my plate without my meddling friend.

'Right. Had enough', he stares, in a chilling calm.

I blink, feeling startled. And guilty.

'I didn't mean to snap—'

'John, get up. I'm getting you your jacket. We're getting this finished today.'

'H-How?' I stutter, bewildered.

'We're doing the classic detective declares deductions routine. Easy. Come along, John. You really don't want to miss this. You won't have seen this one coming!'

_**.**_

'We're back at the farmers land, where it all started, Sherlock. We've brought a police inspector with us from your grand reveal.'

Sherlock looks beyond the fields of wheat, onto the distance. He looks quiet, patient, if only at the surface. The same brilliant and ebullient energy I'll forever associate with my genius friend bubbles under the surface.

'The local inspector can have the credits on this one. I don't need any more fame than your blogs bring me, John.'

By our side, Lestrade protests: 'Sherlock, you invited _me!_ I was quite busy too, thank you very much!'

Sherlock turns, looking aptly confused. 'Oh. Lestrade. Hmm, hi.'

I'm giggling. I know for sure the younger detective is pulling the inspector's leg on this one. Greg breaks into a knowing smirk.

'Go on, you muppet, what is this all about then? This has got to be one of the biggest cases you've brought me to.'

'Oh, I seriously doubt that, inspector. The truth can be far wilder than any of our imaginations until we put all the facts in their correct order.'

'Go on, then. Knock yourself out', our friend incentivises. He too knows well that gleam in the tall dark haired detective's eyes. The one that silrnyly promises miracles and grand reveals.

'No, I would not gloat', Sherlock replies demurely, for once. 'This case has caused John severe adversities. It all started quite by chance, as the best adventures often do. A glance out of a moving train's window and I found a natural neon arrow to a dead farmer. Close inspection of the evidence on the body brought back the memory of an old acquaintance. A mythical but genuine giant octopus we once freed from London's sewer system back into the wild. What was she doing so far up the coast in an irrigation canal by a farmer's field, we may only speculate. It could have been a gestation and birthplace niche, but her pups are now growing strong and independent. No, I don't believe Octie was looking for a home, but for a safe hideout from something far dangerous, possibly lethal, that sprung on her. You see, Octie has uncovered a very old, Second World War operation from the Allied forces. A defence weapon that was never deployed, in the end. Here, you may ask? So far from London or anywhere of importance? Well, then, where else would you hide something of importance when there were bombings taking place, but a peaceful countryside landscape, deeply engaged in the effort to feed the nation with food? Here was the ideal hideout for a new war weapon, a mini submarine, the one John and I have found.'

Greg squints. 'Does your brother know about this?'

'Mycroft won't comment.' Sherlock shrugs, keeping a straight face.

'That's as good as an admission, Lord help us!' Greg whispers.

I recap, for the confused audience: 'Octie found the submarine as she was hiding from danger. Maybe a tide of runoff pesticides made way to her safe place and threatened the survival of her family, throwing her into a vindictive murder spree on the farmer. But why her fixation on the submaribe? Why not just run away with the little ones she so desperately needed to protect?'

Sherlock turns to me, soberly. 'Perhaps she had made the submarine her home and safe refuge. There's even a chance she connected it to the sea and hoped it could take her there. What she didn't count on was the greed of a farmer.'

'The dead man?'

'The one who alerted the foreign intelligence, who sent ahead one of their own, a Chinese mafia spy, to scout the product and check it as legit for the buy.'

'That was the runaway guy in a motorcycle?'

'Of course, John. A quick search of the licence plate gave me the much needed connection with the Chinese embassy.'

'There's nothing remotely Chinese in all this case!'

'You'll pardon me if I disagree, but why don't I leave it till later. If there is nothing you'd pick up on, John, is but proof of the counted upon professionalism from a man hired by a secret and secretive foreign power in England. In the end, the nationality is hardly the point. Many other foreign powers could, to the date, have shown interest in the abandoned automated submarine tucked away in a barn by the canal.'

I sigh and look down on the three buckets of water and toddler octopus we have with us in the middle of a wheat field.

'And Octie's family? Mystery solved, how can we save them?'

Sherlock smiles softly. 'Good old John. Yes. Octie. I suppose that leads us to having to take the war submarine, make it work and free the captive octopus plus reuniting her with her pups, relocating them to safety. Have I left anything out?'

'Yes. Just one thing. How are we going that?'

Sherlock smile broadens.

'Come and see for yourself, John. Do take notes. You'll want to blog over this.'

Lestrade protests as he follows us: 'I thought you said I could have this one, mate!'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	27. Chapter 27

_A/N: "From: Santa. To: Sherlock". That's what it said in the neat label of a wrapped up Christmas present._

'_John, we've had a break in!' That's what the detective shouted out early in the morning, upon the discovery of the said present on the mantelpiece._

'_What are you doing?' A confused flatmate blurted out, bleary-eyed and bed-haired, as he came downstairs to find the detective dusting the packet for prints._

'_Santa?' asked a jittery detective. 'Clearly an alias! Someone did not want to admit authorship. A left-handed person, judging by the scissor marks at the cut ends of the cheap, tacky, supermarket grade tape. It could be yours, but that's clearly what some person unknown wants me to think! Oh, this is clever! A meticulous but short-tempered person, judging by the crease pattern on the wrapping. The obvious choice of season adequate motif on the paper is stereotypical and won't allow for many guesses as to whom the culprit is.'_

_Right. It could never be that simple. That John Watson had left the mystery gift to a sulky detective, in the hopes of cheering him up._

'_Are you going to open it anytime soon?'_

'_Surely not, John! I've been challenged on my own turf! I will not forfeit!'_

_John yawns and paddles back upstairs._

_Next time he might just give Sherlock an empty box. Clearly the detective's biggest enjoyment is the trill of investigation, not the nice gift inside. -csf_

* * *

_**10**__**th**__**.**_

'It'd be a lot faster of we all chipped in!' Lestrade verbally admonishes the consulting detective taking a break from the pushing and shoving of the metal carcass of a submarine, through the open wheat field distance to the watery canal. 'And I still don't see how this thing will fit the canal! The height if the vessel has got to be at least three times the depth of the damned water in there!'

Gasping for breath, I request: 'Leave that to Sherlock, he can sort it out.'

The genius finally snaps his attention back to us as the mini submarine hits the canal. Just as Greg predicted, it looks akin to a rubber duck atop a glass of water. In fact, it hardly reaches the running water course.

'Well, get inside', Sherlock urges us. 'John, I see no other way about it. I hope you have brought your gun.'

I nod. I have, of course. What is this all about?

There's no time left for questions as Greg Lestrade takes inside the last of the three octopuses. Sherlock elegantly slides in next, grabbing the edges of the metal hatch with confidence.

'Can we all fit in there?' I ask after them.

'Barely!' The inspector admits.

'Yes, of course we can!' Sherlock contradicts him.

I reach out to the metal hatch just as the first sounds of motorised vehicles drum up from the distance. I stop and look around us. Dark shadows are silhouetted against the bright skies all around us, we're surrounded.

I instinctively take my hand to my waistband, just as my fingertips make contact with the security latch on my gun, I know the single fire power is hardly enough right now. I can't shoot my way out of this one. They have the high ground. We're sitting ducks in a deadly trap.

'John!'

Hands grab me, steadying me against the hatch of the military vessel. I nod, half torn by the desire to stay and shoot as many as I can get, and – maybe – go inside, follow instructions, and just might have a chance at keeping my friends safe.

'John.'

I glance at the pale face of the man leaning up against me from behind, one hand heavily laid on my shoulder with familiarity and the other extended ahead of us both pointing at some lever sticking out from the canal bend upstream. Trusting Sherlock, I raise my gun and shoot at the lever.

It moves, as the bullet deflects on the metal surface, ricocheting away with a metal spark. Next thing we know, an onslaught of water is released our way, as dam gates open. _Oh. _Eyeing the incoming onshaught of water at high speed, Sherlock pushes me under the submarine hatch forcibly. Greg is pulling it shut after us, isolating us from the day light and enemies above, and two seconds later, just as Sherlock commands the torch on his phone to light up the narrow space, we are hit by the avalanche of water, that dislodges us from the banks and forces us onwards.

We're moving!

I feel the slimy tentacles of three octopuses climbing on my frame for safety, much like giant spiders with suction cups. I almost keep over as their scared little bodies wind around me in tight despair. The two girls are the bravest, wrapping around my waist, seeking my protection. The boy places himself tightly wrapped on top of my head, like a novelty hat. I brace myself on the bumpy ride the best I can.

Sherlock is sat at the old commands panel, a keyboard type of display in coppery oranges and oxidized greens of dials, buttons and precision navigational instruments. In front of him a vast window display in panels of curved glass, allowing the view of the healthy algae green tinted waters and gravel ground. Sherlock is at home trying to steer the levers and gears to the whims of swerving canals and bifurcations on the path, that we spot through a very dirty seethrough window at the front. Greg is just plain cheating, trying to call for back up on his phone, but the metal encasing around us is making any communication with the outside world near impossible.

The submarine has been gaining speed and suddenly, with one last loud crash, comes to a brisk halt against a quiet water front, and is left floating away in peaceful wide waters at last.

Holding his forehead, Greg is the first to react. 'Where are we?'

'Water reservoir of some description', the pilot retorts, finally releasing the tight grasp on the commands ahead of him.

'What a joy ride!'

I blink, looking around from what I see outside, now that the rapid waters have cleaned the windows somewhat more. What do we do now? We've lost the bad guys, sure, but are we sinking the submarine and swimming ashore? And our little eight-limbed refugees?

A thud echoes in the metal submarine. Then another, and another.

Then silence.

We all glance at each other.

Until.

The vessel is yanked forcibly under the surface of the clear waters of the reservoir. Air bubbles rush across our window, disguising the view outside. Then another metal clank and another. Two more secure thick tentacles wrapping around our vessel. With a shimmering ivory tone and a majestic iridescent gleam. _Octie._

A dark, unblinking eye narrows against the dirty front window, studying us, unnerving in its intensity.

We're safe now. In tow of a giant murderess octopus we know so well.

After a few minutes of guided sailing we are brought back to surface in a far edge of the artificial lake, next to shrouding willow branches. Safely out of view of curious bystanders. Sherlock opens the hatch and slowly passes each of the little feisty octopuses, who, at the sight of their mother, become docile and well-mannered at once.

The reunited family then starts a ritualistic rolling swim and dice routine on the peaceful waters, as if small turbines or spinning wheels, in a dance that brings them close and then farther apart, frolicking innocently in the water.

'I'll tell Mycroft to ignore anything else but the war submarine. He'll be grateful enough to comply', Sherlock comments.

'And them?' demands Greg, pointing at the creatures. 'We'll just leave them here?'

I nod. 'We found them a home. It will do for now.'

_**.**_

Dishevelled, jumper drooping from my shoulders, a yawn caught as it escaped my fuzzy brain, I follow the impending force of doom that is Sherlock Holmes on a new case. His refractory period between cases is fantastically short. He's up for it again, so soon, when all I want is to curl up and sleep a blessed restful night.

Not even the damp coastal wind can perk me up.

'Sherlock, it's a cold case. It's been a cold case for so long it's not really pertinent whether we tackle it today or tomorrow or in three decades time. Can't we just go back to—'

The detective firmly presses the ivory toned door bell and quickly brushes some imaginary lint off his immaculate suit, waiting impatiently for the front door to open.

There are footsteps the other side of the modern cottage door, energetic and springy. In less than no time a young dapper man opens the front door and smiles pleasantly.

'Ah, Mr Holmes! Welcome to our humble abode! We had nearly given up on the hope you'd come.'

Sherlock glances darkly at me and remarks: 'I've been delayed.'

_Hey, it wasn't me, you know?_

_And anyway I got you this case._

One look around the house and I'm feeling like a fish out of water. Maybe I shouldn't have got Sherlock this case after all.

'Been busy, I expect', the gentleman with too much hair product and ogling my friend in a creepy manner politely chats as he hushes us through the expensive manor.

'John, makes us some tea', the client snaps.

'Excuse me?' I quip, stunned.

'John, my man servant', he clarifies, looking over my shoulder. I turn just in time to spot a fleeting shadow moving away.

Sherlock smirks. 'I've got one too. Mine is less well trained', he adds to bug me.

'Mr Holmes', the prick of a client starts again. 'You'll want in on this case. A locked room murder. The victim was my uncle, in fact, who was murdered in this very house. You won't regret having travelled so far. My uncle was found strangled to death in the bathroom, laying in a tub of cold water, no apparent reason for his death but the strange marking resembling the minute suction cups on his skin, a reality so preposterous no man could entertain— Mr Holmes? Mr Holmes! Sherlock!'

The detective firmly grabs his scarf and coat, glaring angrily at the client.

'Rudimentary at its best! Next time send us a real case and I'll have John sign you my autograph for your fan collection.' He points at a deerstalker on the coat hanger by the door. 'John always signs my autographs, I can't quite get the hang of those proud Hs, or frankly be bothered at all. Do tell everyone it is John who owns and signs the fan's replies, thus putting them off, my assistant is in need of a bit of a break. Anything I can do to ease his way a little... Come along, John! There's a train to King's Cross leaving in thirteen minutes from platform 3B and we can be home by ten!'

I get up, between the flippant detective and the speechless client!

'But the case, Mr Holmes!'

'Oh, yes, just pay John the usual fees, I don't handle the sordid monetary affairs', the detective waves off, swinging open the front door. Our taxi is still on the driveway, with the driver momentarily delayed by some faulty radio tuning. Sherlock just opens the car door, imperiously waiting for me to slide inside. Which I do, in equal amounts amused and bewildered.

'John!' Sherlock calls out.

I squint. 'I'm already inside, mate!'

'Not you. The slave one', Sherlock snaps. 'The one who held back our taxi because he's leaving his employer, he's had enough.'

I blink. _How the hell he knows that? _And I scoop over in the back seat.

Right on cue, a tall burly man leaves the house in a huff and slides inside the waiting cab. Sherlock slides next, with a wafted wave of the hand, and the cabbie sets off.

'Thank you, Mr Holmes. You're alright, aren't you?' the man we never met before smiles openly.

The detective huffs and turns to the window and the dull view outside.

The man glances at me, trying for an explanation. I shrug and melt into the cab seat. It can wait. All can wait. We're going home.

_**.**_


	28. Chapter 28

_A/N: Yeah, I like plants, so what? -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'Sherlock, since when do we have a botanical garden growing on Mrs Hudson's rooftop?'

Sherlock has been acting shady for weeks. So this morning I decided enough was enough, and mostly out of concern that he might be keeping some dangerous secret from me, I forfeited all notions of privacy and just followed him. I must have done a good job, for he didn't seem to notice the barefooted soldier climbing the stairs after him (stealth is an asset in the army), nor did he hear the soft click of the roof's emergency exit door as I unlocked it after him.

Of course I know about the rooftop access. I had to keep an eye on midnight smoking extravaganzas, and there was this time or another where Sherlock actually did a test run on his homemade fireworks from this very rooftop.

Didn't quite look the same as now, though.

This is all my hyperactive flatmate's doing.

There's a varied and well maintained garden atop 221 Baker Street. Flowering shrubs in raised beds, a shaded corner with a comfortable chair, even a potting shed (just narrowly avoiding being seen from the street I gather) – and _is that a bee hive?_

Sherlock is oblivious to my shock. He thinks a couple of seconds and answers gravely: 'Since March or thereabouts. The rainy gusts of wind in the winter were a big hindrance.'

'Really? March? A garden?' I'm flabbergasted, he's solemn and ecclesiastic. Somewhere in the back of my mind I notice he's not displeased to have me see in his private hideout. _As if he had always thought of sharing it with me._

'It's quite useful in the science of vegetable poisons and toxins, John. And to answer your next question, you spend too many hours in your other job at the surgery, so I had plenty of _unsupervised_ _time_ in which to do my biding. Therefore I do not expect you to contribute to the studies right now, although that offer does not preclude your participation in the near future.'

I hope he means participate in the watering and tending of the ruddy plants, and not as a test subject in a vegetable poison effects study.

He reads mind easily. 'Just drop it, John. You always object to anything in principle, have you not noticed? This will be your garden as much as mine—'

'You're just hoping I water the plants and pull the weeds out for you—'

'As a doctor your knowledge of poisons and toxins will complement perfectly my scientific experiences, can you not see?'

I look around and bask in the absolute quietness of this secluded paradise. Even the constant noise inputs from a busy city seem to blue and fade against the sound of leaves rustled by the breeze.

The amount of work that Sherlock has put into it, in order to have it grow! This is the ultimate proof that despite appearances at times my friend is the idealist type.

I chuckle. 'You are truly amazing, Sherlock.' He hums quietly, as if indifferent, but I can tell he's blushing after the not insubstantial praise. 'I bet you can't wait to have a case when all of this proves the key to saving the day!'

'Naturally, John', he alleges easily, as he takes hold of his vintage copy of The Beekeeper's Guide. 'The Work is all that matters.'

_But, honestly, how can a tiny garden, thriving on luck, help Sherlock Holmes solve a case?_

_**.**_

Turns out Sherlock had sat on a mighty deduction all day – _once_ _I already know the answer, John, the rush is gone! _– and saved the conclusion of a case he'd been working on for my comeback after working a long shift at the surgery. I could never say No to Sherlock, and tired as I may be, I'm not starting such an healthy habit now. I said _Yes_ and _Show me the way_. He beamed right at me.

The cab is already mysteriously conjured as we walk out of 221's door, parking at the curb as I shut the door behind us.

'Here, take some fresh strawberries to eat on the way there, John. We want to avoid a cranky sidekick on the crime scene, if at all possible.'

'Hmm, these are really nice, mate!' I say, with my mouth full.

_**.**_

'Lestrade, the rediscovered mummy's bandages are today's woven cotton, anyone can see the perfect weave pattern of modern mechanization!'

Greg Lestrade's face falls at the reveal. Both detectives lean over the desecrated coffin on an open crypt, where the skeleton was discovered with two grown heads sticking out of one suited torso.

'It looked so real!'

'A common vegetable dye was used to fake age discolouration, inspector. Have the forensic technicians try onion peel infusion, it should do the trick. Which you'd know if you'd have bothered to read my blog updates on plant pharmacology and alternative uses like you said you did!'

'Yeah, right, I guess I... forgot.'

'Forgot?'

'Look, you couldn't make your scientific publications a tiny bit more... understandable? There's a lot of big words per square inch, mate.'

Sherlock spitefully grabs the second head from the corpse and stalks out of the crypt, with his feelings irretrievably hurt.

_**.**_

'Your shoulder is stiff, John.'

I nod.

'Well, I caught the 300 pounds accomplice in the getaway car... Your knee is wobbly, Sherlock.'

He nods.

'I caught the twin robbers inside the bank. They put up a fight too.'

'We're getting old, aren't we?' I ask, tiredly.

Sherlock makes an effort to get up from his comfortable, yet a bit low, armchair.

'I'll make us some soothing herbal tea. Got just the right type of chamomile, John.'

I push myself up too. 'I'll boil the kettle.'

_**.**_

'Can I have a look at the body, Molly?'

The pathologist jumps at the honeyed words. She blushes as she stammers: 'We are still looking. Was buried somewhere in this park thirty years ago. The sniff dogs haven't picked up on any scent, it's so long after it all happened.'

Sherlock rolls his eyes and lifts an indolent finger, pointing away. 'There. The azaleas growing at the surface have the brightest colour. Their patch of soil is more acidic from the oxidisation of the rusty iron axe the victim's head was sliced with, according to the confession, and that most likely was stuck on a thick bone as the cranial bone as so the weapon was buried with the corpse.'

The detective beckons me to follow him as we swiftly move on to the next crime scene.

_**.**_

'The skeleton was found by the contractors even they were fitting a new decking at the back of a suburban house. Must have been here a long time, there at plant roots growing intertwined in the rib cage', inspector Gregson reports as we oversee the huge dug up hole on the back of a private cottage.

Sherlock sighs and starts his characteristic deductions tirade: 'Japanese knotweed. Check my blog for the rapid, invasive type, annual growth rate, or any good garden pest eradication website. Judging by the knotweed's fast growth, the moisture in the soil and the recent landscape if the private garden, the skeleton has been buried here since Halloween alone. Check the local mortuaries for corpses stolen around that time in reported breaking and entering crimes. It was set up as a practical joke by the last owner, inspector. Next time give me a real case. Tell Lestrade not to lend me to incompetent co-workers, while you're at it! Come along, John!'

_**.**_

'Hang in there, John!'

I scrunch my face in agony. Sweat drips from my forehead. I've been poisoned by some renegade group of foreign terrorists. It's not looking good.

'Tell me, John, what does it taste like?'

My eyes roll of their own accord.

'What tastes—?' I repeat in a hiss.

'The aftertaste, John, describe me the aftertaste if the poison you have ingested in your tea!' he shouts, his voice wavering with emotion.

'My tea?' It's becoming harder to make sense of my friend's questions. The room is getting dark.

'The ambulance won't get here in time, answer me! Is it bitter or sweet? John, tell me!'

'Bitter. I don't... don't take sugar.'

He huffs triumphantly. 'A powerful alkali. John, you are going to be alright. That is, after you drink my antidote. You won't like the taste, but beggars can't be choosers, as they say.'

I hear the clank and shatter of glass vials and a cold smooth surface is pressed against my lips.

'Drink, John', he directs me with a kind, soothing tone of voice.

I do. I trust Sherlock to save my life. He always will.

_**.**_

I wake up biting a desperate shout – of alarm, pain, fear. I'm left breathing fast and shallow in the night. My eyes slowly adjust to the darkness inside my room, the clear moonlight filtering through the window pane.

Pushing away my sweat drenched t-shirt I get up from the creased bedsheets and wrap myself in my dressing gown. I go out into the corridor.

Sherlock must be asleep.

Baker Street is so silent. Peaceful.

Empty.

Sherlock is spending the night out. At the Holmes manor, mummy Holmes insisted in "parading him in an odious family reunion", according to the detective.

Echoes of mortar explosions and gunfire come in and out of focus in my traumatised mind.

I decide to go up the stairs, absently. I push that fire door open as I yearn for the cool night air.

I'm running from myself. I've got nowhere to go.

I stop short at the sight ahead of me. The pale moon, the calm, sleeping herbs and flowers, some insects buzzing in the distance, and _two_ garden sheds.

A second shed has materialised, as mysteriously as the garden itself.

I find myself moving closer, opening the second shed door. It's perfect. Cosy, quiet, safe. I take a tired seat on the arm chair and pillows, hugging a soft blanket. Hooked on a nail there is a camping lamp I can turn on a soft glow, and on a small side table I recognise from 221B's usual clutter there's a thermos flask that vaguely releases the whiff of tea.

How many times as the caring madman refiled the tea for the night in case I found myself in the throes of my war nightmares, I wonder.

I let it all ground me, it's healing construction and activity around me. I snuggle inside the oversized blanket, feeling its weight, feeling safe.

_**.**_

'John, I am counting bees. They are risking rapid extinction. It is a necessary study of numbers in a sample population.'

I frown. 'No, you're not. You just don't want to have the trouble of watering the rooftop garden with me. How can you be so lazy?'

He smirks when he thinks I'm not looking.

'Oh, Sherlock?' I call, softly.

'Yes, John?'

I hit him with the hose water's full blast.

_**.**_


	29. Chapter 29

_A/N: How did this one come about? How odd am I? -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'John?'

I blink through sleep blurred eyes as I look up to my friend, calling me awake with insistence.

_He's lucky I'm not punching him right now._

I won't mention the instinctive jerk, or the fact that the genius foresaw it – the bursting fire of a former soldier against the world awake – and he pinned my wrists down against the polyester upholstery. The cautious measure kept me from punching him and then having to apologise profusely, but still left me to feel a bit cheated. Too much adrenaline running in my veins with nowhere to go.

_Why are you waking me up, Sherlock?_

He answers my unspoken thoughts with uncanny proficiency:

'Obvious, John. You fell asleep in the back of Lestrade's car. Completely ignoring fantastic defenestration crime scene – oh, how I envy your ability to tune out the most exciting stimuli; the smells, the gradient of reds and browns, the blood splatter from a height and the—'

He stops short, as he sees something in my eyes. 'But enough of that. I can give you an abridged version of the facts later. Lestrade is arresting the culprit as we speak, and I am taking you home. In fact, I'm buying you dinner first.'

'What a lame date proposal', I mock in self-righteous derision. He actually blushes as a result.

'John, I—'

'Just joking, mate.' I rub my painfully twitching shoulder, responding to the cold night.

He sketches a brave, but confused, smile.

'John, I've never taken anyone like you on _a date_, as you call it', he admits.

'What would you call it?' I scrunch my face, feeling a bit sleep-muddled in my thoughts.

'A meaningless social interaction interlude set between traditional role-playing standards for illusionary future prospects of courtship and mating.'

I blink. There will be no mating.

'That doesn't sound quite as nice as the thing is.'

'Thing?'

'A date.'

'I wouldn't know.'

I glare at the obviously handsome man in front of me. 'You're Sherlock Holmes. You can just about date anyone you want, anyone would be extremely lucky to have you on a date! Gosh, in any day of the week your fan club would stand outside Baker Street in the pouring rain for a chance to glimpse you, never mind a date with you! Anyone in the whole of London would open up a free space in their calendars for you, mate!'

'Anyone', he repeats, coldly. 'Any one person. How _promiscuous_ do you reckon I'd be, John?'

'What?' I don't get it. 'You'd be, you say? You don't contemplate dating anyone? Ever?'

He huffs, short-tempered. 'There's that word again. _Anyone_. I don't want _anyone_, how about that?'

'So, no dates, huh?'

'Married to my work, John, recall that? And faithful, I may add.'

I nod, slightly bewildered at his sudden gravitas.

'But, John, I'll take you on a date, after your expressed request.'

'What? Wait, no!' _I didn't!_

'It will be a learning experience. I'm sure I can learn.'

'People already talk, mate, no way!'

He seems impervious to my words. There's a kind of steely resolution in his features.

It's oddly stoic.

_Hey, I'll have you know I'm a great catch!_

'Tomorrow night, John, I'm taking you out.'

'You always do. In the middle of the night sometimes too.'

'It will be my pleasure', he adds politely, with a distinctive distance between his words and his thoughts.

'You better be paying for this idiocy', I grump, crossing my arms in front of me. _I'm not passing up a free meal and the chance to watch Sherlock squirm at something the genius is not perfect at, like everything else._

'But you mustn't get your hopes up, John, this is not the kind of man I am.'

'Same here.'

'No, you are the Three Continents Watson the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers have turned into the stuff legends are made of', he huffs, sounding oddly resentful.

'Wait, how do you know about my silly nickname?' Has he been interviewing my old army mates again?

'We must all bear our crosses, John!' he declares before disappearing back into the gory crime scene, calling out for Lestrade's attention, promising him the accomplice's profession, height and shoe size.

'Wait, Sherlock! My nickname was coined to mock me, not to define me!'

'That's the spirit, John!' he defends, absent-minded, walking away.

_**.**_

Granted, it might be a shamble, but who wouldn't want to date Sherlock? The socially isolated genius really seems oblivious to his great marketability in the dating world. Let's see. He's got a great figure, from all the running around, chasing criminals, I suppose. Never seen him hit a gym, and yet he's fit as a fiddle. He's got an alien but pleasant face, with piercing deep eyes that seem to read your innermost thoughts. All that mind reading voodoo could pass as romantic without a stretch of the imagination. Luxurious dark hair, perfect suits, and he knows how to sweet talk you in twelve languages, eight regional dialects, one dead language and a few fictional languages (Klingon and Elvish, at least, he used them on a case a few years ago), all with that ice melting deep voice of his. Who wouldn't be attracted?

_You're that shallow, John Watson?_

It's not just how he bloody looks: _perfect_. Sherlock's brain is intoxicating, it's whirlwind brilliance and neck breaking speed have the power to eclipse all else in the room. His heart, hidden beneath layers of acidic remarks and scientific reasoning, is pure and generous beyond reproach. His humour is dark but simultaneously innocent, as his laughter is mischievous but pure.

One could fall in love with Sherlock through the internet or a television screen. Hell, even the radio would do.

And that is exactly what I must do. Set Sherlock up with someone who fancies him – easy – who can put up with him – trickier, but it can be arranged – and who treats the lonesome genius as he deserves to be loved.

_John Watson, matchmaker._

Sherlock is trying to prove to me he can date. I'll use that and prove to him he can try a relationship.

Easy peasy. Anyone should be so lucky as to have Sherlock's attention. My mate's been wasting his attention on rotting corpses, so how hard can this be? Give him a live one and ain't that an improvement?

I hum a tune under my breath as I comb my hair in front of the wardrobe mirror.

Someone knocks at the bathroom door. 'Yoo-hoo!' Mrs Hudson.

I glance at the dividing door and she's already announcing:

'Brought you some clean underwear, John. I've just done a wash load. You never know how the night might turn out, what with you and Sherlock...'

'Mrs Hudson, it's not a real date!' I huff, exasperated. _Where does the dear old lady get these ideas?_

'If you won't open the bathroom door I'll just leave the clothes out here, but John if you think I haven't seen what men have between the legs, think again! I haven't come straight out of a Victorian novel, you know?'

I see myself frowning in the bathroom mirror. I'm clothed anyway.

'And stay away from that cheap cologne, John, Sherlock won't stand the scent of artificial juniper!'

I sigh and lower my head. _Great, now I'm going to have to shower and start all over again._

_**.**_

'John, ah, there you are. Predictably on time.'

'We didn't set a time.'

'It's not my fault you couldn't make an informed guess, John. Anyway, may I direct your attention to the coffee table, by the shrivelled monkey hand? I believe it's customary to offer floral arrangements to one's date.'

I blink. He's really gone out of his way, trying to make a point. _What is his point, again? That he could date if he chose to?_

'Who's your source?' I retort, as I'm taken back by the sight of a dozen premium red roses, lying on the marred wood surface.

'The world wide web. They also insisted on the choice of red roses over other more deadly flower, like digitalis. You like purple, you associate the colour with my favourite shirt (therefore with me) and other positive stimuli, and I thought I could multitask. An analysis on the poison toxin in the digitalis flower would be just the ticket, but the internet insists it's not romantic.'

'The internet?'

'A forum called "loveless babes" to be precise. They were most keen to help me set up tonight's scheduled activities.'

I start getting a bit concerned. Sherlock is taking this whole silly thing too seriously.

'Sherlock, you don't need internet advice from the loveless babes bunch. The clue is in the name? Just be yourself and I'll walk you through what a date would be like.'

'This is a date.'

'Yes, technically, a date, but—'

I see a tiny spark of panic in Sherlock's young features and rethink my words. It'd figure the genius could be a bit insecure beyond his area of expertise. A date is about the heart, his big brain won't afford him his usual advantage this time.

'You are my date, John.'

I let some tension off my shoulders and nod gracefully. 'I am. I'm your date, Sherlock.' I head over to where I've put two glasses of red warming up to room temperature, on the mantle. Handing him one, I volunteer: 'To the beginning of your dating life, Sherlock. May you find someone deserving soon.'

He hesitates to take the glass, and when his hand finally reaches out, it trembles minutely.

'Yes', he says bravely at last. 'I believe I'll find a perfect dating partner sooner than you expect.'

I smile sunnily. 'That's the spirit!'

We toast our glasses and as I sip the red, I realise fleetingly that I still have no idea what sort of... woman... man... _human_... is Sherlock even attracted to. How can I know him so well and yet so little?

Belatedly I notice Sherlock is eyeing me attentively too.

_**.**_

'It was a lovely meal, Sherlock.'

'Should think so, as you seemingly attempted to consume your weight in Angelo's delicatessen foods.'

We're still at the Italian restaurant, the weird looks have died down and this time I haven't even complained of the romantic table candle.

'Now if this was a real date—' I start.

'This is a real date', Sherlock interrupts, overly serious. 'I asked you on a date and you said yes.'

'I did, of course I did. I meant, when you come on your next date—'

'Up for a repeat already? Could you possibly be that hungry again? Or is it customary to arrange the next dates in advance? I can free up my agenda till mid March with a good degree of certainty, John. How about you?'

I open my mouth and only a croaky sound emerges. I'm losing grip here.

'_Your_ next date, mate. Why would you want to date me?'

'You are witty, kind, and lethal with a 3.5 calibre, John. We are already accustomed to one another's quirks, are proficient at reading each other's minds and enjoy shared hobbies and interests. Conveniently we share quarters and you sleep nearby – _somewhere_ – I believe in a part of 221B as well...?' he finishes, a bit uncertain.

'You utter nutter, you know damn well where my bedroom is, you go there far too often to rummage around, when you think I won't find out!'

He purses and releases his lips. 'Oh, upstairs? Oh, I suppose that's why your things keep littering my storage area.'

'Is that why I keep finding your summer suits in my closet?'

'Must be. Also you had free space, whereas I don't. Lastly, there's no way you'd be confusing my suits with your own.'

'You are so trying to put me on! You want to prove to me you are undateable, Sherlock, and you're doing it because you are scared of being loved by someone!'

'I see. _Anyone _is now _someone_. A bit more specific, but still—'

'No, you don't get to do this! You are incredibly attractive, a demi-god with a great set of brains and a warm heart!'

'And _someone _is now _everyone_', the detective derides, rolling his eyes.

'You are ruddy perfect and you keep pushing everyone away as if the rest of the world has the plague!'

Sherlock's expression turns guarded, cold. 'For all I know they may do.'

Aggravated, I protest: 'Fine, I'm a doctor, just refer them to me!'

He raises his arms in temper. 'Why would I date _someone else_?'

I deflate quickly. 'What do you mean _someone_ _else? _You've already got _someone_ in your life? Is this _the woman_, then?'

Sherlock huffs and remarks sideways: 'Great. Jealousy. Can you be any more banal, John?'

'No, Sherlock. That's', I swallow tightly, 'great.'

_Wow, it stings;_ that he'd keep this news from me. Won't trust me.

'What do you mean, _great_?'

'Told you, you've got so much to offer.'

Sherlock snatches his napkin and throws it on the table, getting up.

I smirk. 'Do I get to know who's the lucky—' _Girl? Guy? Hmm..._ '—human?'

'You would know the answer by now, if you had only been paying attention', Sherlock declares coldly as we starts storming off. I get up and rush after him. Angelo isn't particularly bothered, he's used to us.

The cold night air separates us in an unreachable distance as Sherlock walks ahead of me in brisk steps, that I follow faithfully.

'Will I get to know them?'

He huffs, without turning or slowing. 'Don't be silly, John!'

'Won't they be jealous you took me out to dinner?'

'Hardly, John!'

'Really, you won't tell me?'

He stops short, turns on me and hisses through gritted teeth: 'Make a deduction, and then _just drop it_, John.'

I blink, more confused than ever.

'You're just bluffing, aren't you?'

He wails in exasperation as he turns and snaps open the front door – did we really stop in front of 221 Baker Street? – before getting inside and letting me in too, slamming the heavy door after us.

We hear a small sad gasp from the landing and see our landlady looking heartbroken. 'Oh dear. Tough night, boys?'

Sherlock's face is veiled by sudden aloofness as he declares: 'I'll be upstairs, John, when you are ready to apologise.'

What? Me? Apologise for what?

'I'm sorry.'

The words come out as a small hiccup. Honest but small, tired. _I was only trying to help, I've made things worse._

Sherlock stops, turns around mid flight of stairs, and gazes upon his flatmate, his best friend, his— _I don't know what weird label to use. They're just words._

'No more "dates", John', he declares as a request.

I shake my head. _No, it's his business anyway._

'No more stupid dates', I agree.

'There's a nice red wine upstairs that has had plenty of time to breathe, John.'

'Great. Can we watch some crap telly?' I ask hopefully.

'If you aren't adverse to a few micro-explosions of homemade TNT', he answers with a smirk. 'I've got an experiment to finish.'

I smirk too. Mrs Hudson sighs as if she's been watching some cheap romantic comedy and recedes back to her flat with a smile plastered on her face.

_**.**_


	30. Chapter 30

_A/N: Thought I'd give these guys a locked room mystery. -csf_

* * *

_**First/Four.**_

I close the front door in a mindless, mechanized gesture born out of habit. For years I've been calling Baker Street my home, and in a fleeting moment, half felt and half summoned by habit, it's as if I couldn't think of anywhere else I have felt this way about before. Home? It's but a front door and a wallpapered corridor, and it's got so many layers of old wallpaper on top of each other that they serve a purpose as thermal insulation for posterity. If Mrs Hudson would ever take them down, strip the walls bare, paint them some modern grey or whatnot, I'd bet she'd find a couple of extra inches on each side. But it wouldn't feel like Baker Street anymore.

The sandwiched wallpaper layers also serve loyally as sound insulators, I add a mental note as the first metal teapot comes rolling down the narrow stairs, clinking and clanking. It rolls to a stop by my feet.

I hesitate to pick it up. You never know what just offense it caused the detective.

He never really mastered the art of tea making. His tea invariably tastes... burnt. How do you burn scorched tea leaves will forever remain a mystery to me.

A second teapot makes a jolly descent on those wooden steps, hasting to join the first. This one finishes the assault course nearly unrecognizable, with a deep dent on the side and a wonky handle.

I hear the third one's release before I even see it, rolling down the steps towards the landing, like a deflated firecracker. That one halts its lacklustre descent right at the landing.

'Sherlock!' I call out, just in case. 'Is it safe?'

From 221B I get the assured retort: 'Of course, would I ever put you in danger?'

'Just every day, thank you very much!' I retort, sarcastic.

'You're welcome!' he replies honestly. We both know I'm attracted to danger and the unpredictable.

I shake my head and climb over the first teapot.

'Do bring them up, John, will you?' the lazy detective adds like an afterthought.

It's therefore with my arms full of banged up teapots that I finally enter 221B.

'Oh.'

I nearly drop the load.

'What is this? Teapot invasion? Are you planning on surrendering soon?'

Sherlock smirks knowingly.

Every surface in 221B seems to have been graced with the addition of a shiny metal teapot. They come in all shapes and sizes, mostly antiques, polished clean and bright, reflecting the warm lamp lights.

'What is this? Aladdin's cave, were he British?' I ask, trying hard to find where to put down the damaged teapots I'm carrying still.

'Trying to prove to Lestrade that the Tea Rooms Murderer couldn't have possibly hit the victim on the head with a teapot. Something far more sinister was planned and executed.'

'How will you prove that by throwing teapots from a flight of stairs?'

'Easy. By a detailed study of the dents, John', he retorts, tense. Then stops, and with a mischievous smirk he adds: 'Am I being insensitive towards you, given your love of tea?'

I shrug. 'Nah, I just need a kettle and a mug, mate.' And, triggered by the conversation, I decide to go to the kitchen to make us a nice cuppa. No frilly, shiny teapots and dainty, fine bone China teacups needed.

'John!' Sherlock follows me, wild and intense as he can be in the pursuit of his beloved work.

'Yes?'

'It's not working!'

I turn around in time to see the detective running fingers through his hair, looking frazzled. I take pity on him.

'A nice hot cup of tea is what you need, Sherlock.'

His face opens in shock, his eyes are deep green as he opens them wide. 'That's it! John, you are incredible!' Not content with giving me a rare (if unwarranted) compliment, he grabs me into a brief tight hug, then releases me with the same maniac energy. 'The metal surface of the teapot was still warm from the tea inside! The temperature caused the metallic alloy to be more malleable, of course! John, I need to repeat my experiments with warm teapots! John, I need more teapots! John, I need you to make tea in each teapot!'

'But— that would take me all night!'

'No one is better at making tea than you, it's got to be you, John! Catching a murderer depends on your tea making skills, John! Go on, get a move on. It's going to take all night, you said!' he ushers me on, with that maniacal gleam of foretold victory I love seeing in his eyes. That always makes it really hard for me to say No to Sherlock.

Anyway, where is he getting all these teapots from?

_**.**_

'Locard's principle of exchange, John. When a killer uses a teapot to bash someone's head, traces of the metal alloy should be found in the victim's scalp. That's the one odd thing that was wrong from the start.'

I take the manila file the detective is handing me. He is still a bit jittery, refusing to sit on his chair (overtaken by teapots anyway), preferring to pace the room agitatedly. I have long taken a seat on my armchair, by the crepitating logs in the mantel.

'There was a dented teapot in the room', I gather.

'Covered in blood and brain matter splatters.'

'It must have made contact with the victim, then. It's odd not to find traces of the metal, sure, but—'

'Electroplated Nickel-Silver, John, be precise.'

'You think the killer used something else, maybe a window sill or a table corner, and wiped the surface clean. Then used the teapot to make it look like the murder weapon.'

'The dented teapot, John. Hence my little experiments.'

I shrug. 'What difference does it make, how the teapot got dented or if it was the actual murder weapon? Lestrade just wants you to find the killer.'

Sherlock's curls bounce as he shakes his head, passionately. 'It doesn't fit, John! I will not abide reality not fitting!'

'Alright, alright, calm down. Have you checked the whole room for any hard surface that may have been used to bash the teapot against?'

'Of course, John, I found nothing. Yet Newton's third law specifically stares that for every action, there's is an equal opposite reaction. Something should have shown marks of the teapot assault. There was nothing there according to the police and the first reports of the initial attending officers!'

'First reports?' Honest, I have no idea what I'm implying, but Sherlock often needs little in the way of nudging as he gets going.

'Have I not mentioned?' he seems genuinely surprised. 'It's a _locked_ _room_ _murder_, John. _Why do you think I care? _No one came in or went out of that room all night. And yet, we've got a crime weapon missing and a murderer that, by all accounts, can walk through walls!'

I blink. 'Secret passages, maybe? We'll have to go there some time, and investigate carefully.'

Sherlock's sudden smile sends alarm bells down my spine.

'I'm glad you agree. We leave within the hour. I've made you an overnight bag, John, no need to worry.'

'Wait, no, wait, where?'

'To some fancy tea rooms, frequented mostly by tourists and local old families with something to prove about class distinction, John. Does it matter where? Surely it's the room itself that matters, John!'

'No, wait. Something's not right. How did someone get locked inside a tea room? Those places are usually packed with waiters and clients!'

'Not, apparently, when they are the local food critic, who wished to be left undisturbed as she sampled her order of tea and crumpets. The manager had so little short notice of the critic's arrival as they were closing down and a toddler to pick up from nursery, that she allowed the guest to sample the produce at her own speed and time, locking up the room behind her, as the owner who would take over after the manager was on route to the tea rooms. The owner should have been there in five minutes, and she would have been, if a tree hadn't collapsed lengthwise at the very end of the local bridge. The owner was almost struck in a freaky accident. Luckily the tree caused only damage to the car, including the motor. At this point, remembering she had someone of importance reviewing her crumpets at the tea room, the owner desperately trying finding someone to go release the critic from the locked building, and indeed locked room. All whilst fighting the torrential rain to glare miserably at her wrecked car. At some point she tells us she got a call from the food critic who, magnanimously told her not to hurry, in view of the tragic circumstances of the wrecked car and blocked bridge. The caller said she was safe, and warm, and that it had been her faulty, being pushy to get served as the establishment closed, so she was prepared to wait till morning if need be. The owner was not happy with the idea that the critic would have a sleep in her fine leather sofas, but figured a grateful guest would make a nice review, and soaked to the bone whilst waiting for road assistance rescue, she agreed it was for the best.'

'How could a murderer know in advance of the falling tree and the late night arrival of the food critic? There's a lot of coincidences there, Sherlock.'

'Coincidences are the universe's hiccups; no one really expects them, and when they start you just want them over with.'

I shake my head, but I know it's merely a perfunctory gesture, I've already accepted the investigation invite.

'All of this whilst the victim was having tea and crumpets?

'Presumably, yes. Maybe some other delicatessen as well.'

'You're just making me hungry now.'

_**.**_

'You know this place', Sherlock deduces easily, from watching me disembark on the train platform. Just that, one glance at his friend and assistant, and he guesses correctly.

I nod, sharply, squaring my shoulders.

'I moved about, with Harry and the family. The Watsons had a little house up here once. Don't think it will still be up, unlike the old train station. Too much changes, Sherlock, once you leave a place where you lived a while.'

My friend's expression darkens slightly. 'Yes. Things change, things you didn't think could ever change.'

I glance at him. Is he talking about his _Absence_ from Baker Street? Did he really think I'd be there, waiting, upon his return, holding a cup of tea and a biscuit?

Or a crumpet.

Waiting for what? For him to cheat death?

I sigh and look up and down the platform.

'Thought someone was supposed to meet us here.'

'I will deliver my protests to Lestrade for such sloppy welcome. Meanwhile, my dear John, perhaps you could be our local guide on these streets?'

Trust Sherlock to use the situation to investigate my growing up.

'We can just get a cab instead', I insist, setting out without waiting on his retort.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	31. Chapter 31

_A/N: It's still amusing me, so I carry on. Vague details like the town's name and the tea room's name are kept deliberately blank (in the tradition of the original stories, narrated as taking place "in the year of 18_–_" or with "our friend S_–_"). Details are unimportant anyway, as I'm not creating John's autobiography, nor a travel guide. -csf_

* * *

_**Second/Four.**_

'Some landmarks, as you expect, will still be the same. You keep a vivid memory of them, and even if you find an old town hall or market looking more run down, it's still essentially _there_... Other things, like shops and new houses, that's a change you expect, you brace yourself for it in a way... Trees are odd things.'

'Trees?' Sherlock repeats quietly, hands in his pockets as we walk the town's high street side by side.

'Really old trees, you can hardly tell a difference. They've grown, yeah, but they are still a blurry green blob. Young shrubs, now turned mighty trees completely transform the way you see the street or park. You estrange them as if they were unbeknown obstacles. You add them to your landmark points and wonder if you'll recognise them the next time you see them, should enough time pass...'

'Your reconnaissance skills are a legacy from more arid landscapes', Sherlock comments. 'Hence vegetation growth throws you off.'

I shrug. He's entitled to his opinion. 'Then there's people.'

'People you knew.'

'People in general. There's a collective sense to a place. How the locals act, their accent and whatnot. It evolves over time, as it's only natural, but a part of you keeps finding it odd. _It is _odd, because the town is made up of its people, their rituals and culture, more than the buildings, the traffic, the new billboard signs.'

'People', Sherlock repeats.

'Which leads me to the old familiar faces of those I've forgotten their names or quirks. I keep expecting to find familiar faces, but they all look like strangers to me now.'

'Some have moved out too. Or lost a lot of weight, dyed their hair, _or died_. Who were you hoping to see again, John?'

I glance up at Sherlock as we wait on a set of traffic lights to cross a busy road. He looks quietly down to me.

'I'm not sure, Sherlock. But this was the last place where I lived before I joined the army.' I look on ahead. 'I guess I hoped to see what took me to the army, to war, to being shot and very nearly "good night, Vienna".'

'Second thoughts, John?' the detective's voice is emotionless and modulated to a casual query. I don't buy it.

'No second thoughts', I answer quietly. The light turns green, Sherlock doesn't seem to notice, too focused on me. 'I like where I am now. My choices brought me to a good life.'

He hums, and follows my lead as I start crossing the street, never really more than a step away from me.

_**.**_

The Tea Rooms are located uptown, near the fashion shops and tourist havens whose public they also serve typically. An old establishment, dated a century old, relying on tradition and type of at least two hundred years ago. No one seems to notice that detail. Old is old, in a generic way, and two centuries old sells better than the emerging roaring twenties, I suppose.

Once the officer on beat keeping an eye on the crime scene allowed us in – I really should check whose badge Sherlock flashed him just now – it was easy to find the exact locked room where the murder had taken place, in a dark stormy night. Big large windows separate us from the world outside.

There are comfortable padded seats in a large room, equipped with a few ceiling to waist high mirrors and waist to floor carved wood panels. Fresh cotton linen on each dainty little round table, with silver plated salt and pepper shakers, shinny sugar bowls and crystal flower jars with ornamental silk flowers. The whole place reeks of sophisticated, sterile, antiquated elegance, as if we had just slipped into a golden age crime novel setting, but that would be to ignore the vivid rusty brown, dried blood puddle on the perfectly waxed floorboards. That focusses my attention at once. One door into the room, another leading to the toilets. All glass pane windows firmly shut and virtually inoperable (unless by means of smashing the glass to allow passage, which has not happened unless a very handy glass windows fitter was on call). The ceiling is a funny assembly of square wooden panels, at each intersection drops a modern light globe. Along the far edge of the room, crammed with tables to its maximum capacity and revenue generating potential, a long leather sofa, cornered by three aligned tables for party groups. Nearby the maître d's small desk, where the manager supervised the guests and employees. Close by the toilets. Sherlock's already headed that way for inspection. As I follow I see him come out of the ladies room, shaking his head. 'Vents or a small window high up. Nowhere by which an intruder come pass through.'

I look on back to the room. It's easy to spot the door to the room that the manager locked after herself, with the guest's consent. A good, modern, sturdy lock, the type that would take Sherlock more than two seconds to beat, and the regular guy a whole night.

'I suppose the manager could have been in on it', I comment, as Sherlock crawls over the floorboards, searching for suspicious loose joints.

'Hardly makes a selling point, John; _Come have tea where a murder was committed._'

I cross my arms in front of me. 'You never know, there's always an audience for the macabre.' _Oh, the irony here._

'I checked the establishment finances, they are in a good place.'

'You did?'

The detective corrects. 'Technically Lestrade's people did. The lower ranks, I would imagine.'

'Yeah, about that. How come Lestrade got this case when we're not in his London jurisdiction anymore?'

'Oh, he liked the victim's books.'

'She was a food critic. So, cook books?'

'Oh, no, John', says my friend, extending me a hand so I pull him up. 'She was once a crime novelist. Didn't I tell you? She used to write locked room mysteries.'

_**.**_

Sherlock had clearly failed to mention he victim's identity. Her bibliography was short lived, but carried her into fame in only the way the most imaginative, implausible, overwrought and gory crime novels can take someone. It had all hit the bookshops much around the time I had left to join the army, actually. Thumbing an old copy of her best selling novel _A Crime Has Been Committed_ I actually wonder if I've not read it back in the day. Long before London and Sherlock Holmes, before internet blogs and body parts being kept refrigerated in the vegetable drawer.

Back in another lifetime altogether. Little did I imagine the potential of what was yet to be in my life.

'John?'

'Hmm?' I retort, distractedly.

'It's a fiver if you wanna buy it', says the man at the till. We've just found a copy of _A Crime Has Been Committed _in a second-hand store.

I flip the pages from back to start, almost as if I could flip time the same way. On the front page I find the ball-pen marked initials JHW.

'Yes. Yes, I'm taking it', I decide.

There's a past I need to revisit.

_**.**_

Tired, achy, sleepy, I dump my travel bag on the bed covers of a modest hotel. I unzip the bag with cold fingers – I always get cold fingers when I'm tired. I sneak a hand inside the bag and halt at once. _What the heck—_

I open the zip wide and stare at a starched collar shirt and my best suit. Right, the genius packed for me. I fell right into that trap. What are we supposed to do, deliver Sherlock's deductions on a ball room? And why not some pyjamas, a toothbrush, a shaving razor? At least I find some clean underwear as a small grace I'm happy to take. I guess I'll have to go shopping tomorrow.

Rubbing my face tiredly I walk on over to the mirror hanging by the door. I look as tired as I feel. Sometimes I find comfort in my own consistency.

I lock the bedroom door, turn around and drag my feet the short distance to the bed, where I slump tiredly. Clothes be damned.

'Thought you'd still be awake, John!'

I jump at the cheerful declaration of an energetic consulting detective.

'What the—'

He ignores my tirade. 'Come on, John, you know I can pick a lock.'

'And you know I locked that door!'

'Yes, you don't want to be disturbed.'

'Precisely!'

'I'll make sure of that for you, it's no trouble at all, John.'

I try to focus directly on Sherlock's eyes for the important message: 'I need to sleep.'

'By all means, I just need someone to listen', he says, twirling a hand in the air, 'you don't need to be... awake.'

'That makes no sense!'

'I think better when you are around, John, and you sleep better in a foreign location if I'm in the vicinity.'

'How would you even know that?'

'Statistically—' he starts, but I interrupt with a sigh of defeat.

'Be my guest', I grunt, tiredly.

He nods and grabs my complimentary piece of chocolate.

Well, I suppose it's alright if he's eating...

I bite back a yawn and lay back on the too soft pillow. Sherlock is standing tall and proud in the small space between the bed, a minimalist desk and a convenient wardrobe, looking in the distance, following fleeting ideas and mental patterns with his eyes. It's oddly hypnotic to watch his sleek elegance and fluid lines. As he starts drawing diagrams in the air my eyelids drop and I inevitably doze off.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	32. Chapter 32

_A/N: Hi. Still not British, a writer or more than myself. -csf_

* * *

_**Third/Four.**_

For once it was my friend insisting on breakfast. He chased me out of my room too early in the morning, I'm still a recently showered, wet haired, sleepy assistant in an overdressed shirt and jeans. Sherlock sits impatiently by the cafe window, flipping the pages of the second-hand novel that was the victim's best seller before she turned food critic to fancy tea rooms.

'This book bears your initials on the frontispiece, John.'

'Yeah, well. Could have once been mine, actually.'

'Hmm', he comments, gravelly. 'It is your typical turn of the letter J, indeed. I suppose next you're going to try to make me believe the H next to the J stands for John and Harry Watson, two siblings in the same household.'

I glare at him. 'You know what the H stands for.' _Hamish._

He snaps the book shut. 'You would have me believe you've never seen this book before. Or these streets, or this town. What is it you're trying to keep secret from me, my dear innocent John?'

I huff through my nose, jaw tight. 'This case is not about me. A woman has been murdered, remember that?'

He instantly switched to aloofness. 'Yes, yes, I heard about that.'

'We should go question some witnesses.'

'Should we now?'

'The manager, the owner, the editor of whatever publication prints food reviews nowadays...'

'So you believe she was murdered over... crumpets?'

'I don't know, I'm not Sherlock bloody Holmes', I hiss, tense. 'We must start somewhere.'

'Where did you go to high school, John?'

'Across town. Why?' I'm confused now. Talking to Sherlock can at times be a roller coaster.

'No reason. I'll arrange for the interviews while you finish your tea.'

_**.**_

_No reason._ Absolutely no reason.

Sherlock and I are sat side by side at school desks, facing the modern interactive board and the teacher's desk. Both the manager and the owner of the tea rooms look daunted and confused, as they sit opposite us, facing back at us.

What happened to the rule about not interrogating more than one witness at one time?

Perhaps Sherlock thought they might turn on each other. So far they are being supportive of one another.

'We've talked to all those police officers already. When can we reopen the establishment?'

'Soon', the detective retorts vaguely, with little care for the truth.

The curly haired woman in impractical heels huffs and slumps against the back of her seat, arms crossed in front of her.

The woman with the thick glasses, the manager presumably, leans forward and asks: 'Will it be safe? I mean, I often have to stay late and close the shop. If a burglar has managed to sneak inside through I don't know where and all...'

I try to reassure her: 'Sherlock and I will make sure it's safe for you.'

She nods, looking grateful. Then she blinks, eyeing me better. 'James?'

I blink. 'John, actually. John Watson.'

'_John_, of course, how _my_ _word_, how long has it been since— You, no, you don't know who I am, do you?'

'I'm sorry', I retort mechanically. It doesn't help jog my memory that I spot, through the corner of my eye, Sherlock going through her handbag under the table. 'You are?'

'We dated briefly. Years ago. Sorry, it was silly of me to think you'd remember— My hair was longer, and I didn't wear glasses— Not important, really.'

For the life of me, I don't recognise her.

I also don't remember leaving a girl behind as I joined the army.

So much was going on in my family home. Would I really forget a girlfriend? Was it a couple of dates like going to the movies? I don't think I remember that either.

No woman likes to feel she's not memorable.

'Yes, of course! Hmm... _Mary_?' Blind guess.

Her face lights up a bit. 'No, Mary's my best friend. I don't think you dated my best friend, John. I can ask her.'

'No need', I hasten to assure her.

'I'm Chandler, by the way. I know, odd name. Mum liked the noir era detective novels.'

'I'm sorry, did we—?' I blurt out. _Great idea!_ I beat myself up, belatedly.

'Oh', she blushes. 'A few dates, John. Only enough to learn your middle name', she adds, coyly.

Sherlock has had enough, apparently, as he ruthlessly interrupts:

'Yes, well, I'll be done with John at about eleven tonight, you can have him from eleven until five in the morning, but I must warn you he has an obsession with sleep...'

We both blush, feeling scolded.

'I'm actually married', she quips meekly.

'Them lay off my assistant', Sherlock growls one moment, the next he's an angelic picture of calm as he gathers some papers on the scribbled desk to note: 'You said you locked up the tea rooms at nine forty five?'

Chandler nods, her voice eclipsed.

'And you went home, _to your husband?'_

She nods, bewildered.

'Sherlock', I call my friend, asking for a truce.

'The food critic, what did she say about being left inside?'

'She was okay with it.'

'No, tell me her exact words', Sherlock demands.

'_I'm okay with this_? That's what she said. She really didn't mind. Of course if only I thought she'd be attacked by some lunatic—'

'Enough now', the detective snaps, holding out an imperious hand. Turning to the store owner he starts with her:

'What type of tree was it?'

She looks troubled, confused and angered at once. 'What type of tree? Mr Holmes, are you serious?'

'Absolutely. Do not stall for time. The species, if you please.'

'Could have been an oak. Or a willow.'

Sherlock is not above rolling his eyes. She hastens to assert: 'An oak. I saw the leaves plastered against the windshield. An oak.'

'Interesting.' Then turning to the maître d he demands: 'At what time did you feed your child supper?'

'It wasn't me, but my husband, while I showered.'

Back to the owner: 'You spoke to the victim on the phone?'

'Yes, I explained to her what had just happened.'

'You were the last person to speak with her alive?'

'Except for the murderer, Mr Holmes.'

'Classic deflection, usually perpetrated by the murderer, but luckily I'm not prejudiced. How did you have her number?'

The woman blinks. 'I didn't', she realises. 'No, you're right, she phoned me. Chandler must have given her my number.'

The woman sat beside her shook her head. 'I didn't.'

'Then who did I speak to?' she voices in a tense whisper.

Sherlock answers quietly: 'The killer, I would presume. You spoke to her killer instead.'

_**.**_

_ "__She stared, long and hard, at the old explorer's souvenir from exotic lands and a past bygone. A long narrow spear, painted in bright red, yellow and black stripes, and a dangling clutch of feathers at the dull end. Long she stood there, with laboured breath and trembling fingertips playing unsung music with trepidation. Finally the woman leaned over to observe the weapon carefully. That's when she saw them, a few speckles of brick red blood, dried on the weapon's handle, and she knew at once; only one person the old country house wore a garment with similar coloured sleeves that could conceal the splashing blood during the frenzied attack, and that person was herself. She looked down in disgust at the now discernible blood stains on her cuff. Wailing in desperation she quickly sought to divest herself from the blood, the crime, the dress. Soon she stood naked, panting, in the dusky library. She kicked her dress from the floor to the roaring fire on the grate, the flickering warm light of the melting polyester gracing her slight, elegant form as she watched the evidence of her crime melt in front of her eyes."_

Sherlock scrunches his face. 'It's farcical, stereotypical, and a scientific mockery, John! She would cough her lungs out with the noxious fumes of burnt cheap polyester too! The public doesn't know how to appreciate a good murder! Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time!'

I smirk, turning a page. 'Wait until she finds out it wasn't her, but her evil twin sister in her dress.'

'How does that even work?' Sherlock huffs, all indignant and just the tiniest bit curious.

I shrug. 'I don't know. Suspension of disbelief?'

Sherlock grunts in outrage. 'If you filled your mind with this vile rubbish, no wonder you made a decision to join a war!'

For once, I don't retort. Sherlock is quick to notice my silent. He stops, derailed at once, blinks a few times, tries to croak out some vague words in a feeble apology. _Accepted. _I let him off at once.

'Don't mock the genre that you've built your success on, Sherlock.'

He regains control at once, and smirks.

'It trained my loyal blogger, if nothing else. We may find that heinous book some space at Baker Street.'

'But it doesn't shed light on who murdered our food critic, née crime writer.'

'Good, after all who likes a copycat murderer anyway? If you're going to kill someone, at least be original is the least we can ask...'

'Of course this is just one of her 89 published novels. Mostly successful according to most internet book club forums and— Sherlock, are you alright?'

He looks spooked. Most likely a sudden idea just hit him.

'No, that's preposterous', he mutters, 'So preposterous there's a chance it may be true. Life is rarely simple, John. Yes, I think I see it now. But why, though. Why? Unless... _oh_.'

I sigh noisily.

'Anytime now, if you would recognise I'm also in the room, Sherlock...'

Only half listening, he tells me: 'You're always in the room, John. Even when you're not.'

'_What?'_

'John, I've got it. But I need to prove it.'

'Okay. How?'

'We're going to spend the night in that locked room.'

'Oh.' I take a deep breath. 'Okay. Are we having crumpets too?'

He smirks. 'I'll see what I can do. Anything for you, John.'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	33. Chapter 33

_A/N: Last one is here. -csf_

* * *

_**Fourth/Four.**_

'The tea rooms were securely locked', Sherlock Holmes recaps for his audience of one perpetually awed blogger. A showman by nature, he's not above rattling the locked double doors to prove them securely fastened. 'The victim was willingly left inside, for all we know, peacefully munching on crumpets.'

'And grading them for the gastronomic association', I add.

'She had access to the loo, but no escape from the facilities that way.'

'By the way, what about health and safety? Shouldn't there be some sort of fire exit?'

'There is, it's one way and hasn't been used. Its use is recorded centrally as some past employees kept sneaking out for a quick break during shift hours.'

'So we're assuming she didn't even leave the room.'

'Correct, John.'

'She saw a murderer coming in, Lord knows how, in a room where she had supposedly been locked in, and she didn't react. Didn't try to escape through the fire emergency door, or catch the attention of someone out on the street.'

'Ah. The large windows', the detective comments, pacing solemnly towards the large glass panes. He turns abruptly to face me. 'It was a dark stormy night, not a soul about. No one glanced out of a window, no slow moving car with a curious passenger swung by. It was a calculated risk. Our murderer was fond of danger.'

The detective walks back and requests: 'Will you be the victim, John?'

_I know just what he means._

Taking a seat at the corner of the room, just next to the leather long sofa, I'm facing the arranged sets of empty tables and seats.

'This is where she sat', I start.

'Yes, John.'

'Can't see the whole room from here', I tell him, twisting and turning on my seat. 'Toilets are at the back. It's a bit awkward when I can have choice of any seat in the house. Even if she liked this table, the sofa just here looks nicer.'

'Go on.'

'No, that's all. Maybe she didn't like mirrors. She's not facing any mirror straight on. Maybe that's what she was avoiding.'

Sherlock sighs, sounding disappointed.

'Fine! You're the genius, tell me how it was done!' I challenge him.

His smirk widens, quite predatorily. This is what he wants, I'm just the powerless spectator now.

His demeanour changes, his moves are open, wide, manic, full of bristling energy. 'The door locks. Your childhood friend is gone. The victim knows time is off the essence, the owner is coming over, for a swap. What does she do? The woman who tastes crumpets for a living and once wrote intricate crime novels? With both jobs she knows the essence of a good research. She has a plan. She gets up from her chair the moment the double doors are locked. She climbs on the table.' The fine china flatters as Sherlock's expensive shoes make contact with the white linen table cloth. The detective stretches confidently to the wooden ceiling panels, tentatively pressing on each corner. Before I can call him to reason, the square section of ceiling gives in, lifted from the frame. Sherlock slides it and extracts an old silk cord. The more he brings out a length of silk, like a magic trick more keeps coming. That is until it stops. The detective smirks and takes a hand into the ceiling gap. Soon the sound of a crank being wound is heard and the cord is pulled back right to the edge. Still holding on to that end of the cord, Sherlock pragmatically warns: 'You may want to avoid death, John, by shifting to another seat.'

The chair's feet scrape the floor as I get up, bewildered.

Sherlock looks back to the trap door space on the false ceiling and comments: 'Ingenious. And all you need is a filled teapot... and "a crime has been committed"_._' He lets go of the cord, smiling down at his partner—_'John!'_

I had leaned over to the table. Sherlock said he needed a filled teapot, the least I could do was to help, right? There was a silver plated teapot full of water right there, on the table, I was reaching over when the alarmed shout came. Next thing I knew, my friend had jumped me from the table, pulling me away, and we were both crashing on the nearby sofa. That, by the way, was not nearly as comfy as it first looked. Not when you get tackled by six foot something of consulting detective.

'What the—'

'Levers and counter-weights, John. It's actually quite an ingenious use of an old system. Look', he urges me. I look up. The gap in the ceiling panels is gone.

And underneath, a very wonky chair, half-broken by a mysterious blunt object.

'Wait, I didn't see that trick.'

Sherlock smiles at my characteristically quick recovery from a near death experience. He too acts as if having just saved my life warrants nothing more than a mere reference in passing.

I'll make sure to properly thank him yet.

'The dented teapot the police collected as evidence, John. The one that we knew for sure had not dented the victim's skull and caused death. Here, let's use this one.'

Once again he climbs the table and reaches for the panel, sliding it open. This time I can tell it slides open by a flap that then is held into place. Sherlock extracts the old silk cord, winds it to his advantage so that he squats and loosely twirls the end on the teapot handle.

'The silk cord is brown', I recognise.

'Yes, John. Whereas originally it might have been ochre yellow, time and dust have discoloured it beyond recognition. Still sturdy enough, and our victim did not think of changing such a charming old detail. And, in the odd event that someone would indeed pass on the street and looked inside the lit tea rooms, it was virtually unrecognizable against a background of stained woods.'

'I guess she couldn't count on a stormy night, although it came handy, demotivating witnesses outside. But if you're saying our victim planned the whole thing, you're forgetting that she had to climb up on the table to pull it through. What if someone looked then?'

'"_Please help me out, I've been locked in!" _would be more plausible than "_Go away, I'm planning my complicated suicide"._ She even phoned the tea room's owner to be sure she had enough time. Probably with some excuse ready, but she didn't need to delay the owner. A falling tree did that.'

'She didn't arrange for the tree falling, then.'

'No one could, John.'

I blink. 'Why so much trouble?'

'It was to be her legacy, John. Her mark imprinted in a town that had forgotten her for the most part. A comeback in fame and superstition that assured she wouldn't be forgotten as easily the second time... Do tell me if you feel the urge to commit a super crime in this town where you once lived, John, and no one remembers you.'

'Chandler remembers me.'

'Ah, that makes this town feel safer already... She remembered you after she got your name wrong, _James_.'

'Don't be mean to her.'

'She's married, John. Now step away, well away.'

I obey, trustingly. He too climbs down the table and carefully eyes the set up. The silver plated teapot, the china cup and saucer with the gold rim.

'All she had to do, John, was to drink her tea and eat the crumpets. With each refill of the cup the teapot weight lessened. The authenticity of the tea room's historical mark assured the teapot in itself was a quite heavy metal alloy, not like today's lightweight, all round accessible, teapots.' Again Sherlock pours some more tea on the cup, filling it to half. He lowers the teapot, still attached to a strained silk chord, hanging from the ceiling trap. 'She drank the tea and filled the cup. Possibly inch by inch, to draw it out. Until one final time the tea cup was full but the teapot was now too light—'

Sherlock fills the cup entirely and puts down the teapot. As he lets go of the teapot, it gets propelled upwards right out of his hand. The other side of the chord is loosened, dropping a heavy wooden box that slams against the chair (again) and sprints back up to the ceiling's hidden mechanism. At the same time, the teapot has hit the edge of the trap door, getting heavily dented on the side, and freed from the chord free falls against the table and rolls onto the floor, spilling whatever little tea was left in in. Finally, the wooden panel collapses back in place, leaving no discernible sign on the ceiling.

Sherlock hisses. 'Double dent, of course! The trap door _and_ the table! I should have seen it!'

I quietly point up to the dark pit space above us.

'What was that we just saw?'

'The blunt object that killed the victim, John.'

'Yes, but _what_?'

'Dumb waiter, it was called. Early domestic mechanization to ease the modern life. It communicated between floors, taking food upstairs or perhaps bringing book down. Like a tiny lift. Many old libraries will have one, later run by means of electricity, it still beats carrying loads of returned books to the upper floors.'

'And no one knew it was there?'

'Probably walled off ages ago. One of the many changes done to the layout of the old house. This will have been, partially at least, a morning room. Hence the large windows. It was sort if a breakfast library if you're going to blog this one, John.'

I shake my head. Wait. 'How does that still work? Shouldn't it... I don't know, have gone all rusty and rotten?'

'John, we don't know for sure when it got disused. Perhaps it was kept oiled and tended for until fairly recently.'

'Do you think the victim once knew someone who lived here, or did so herself?'

'Perhaps, given her previous career, she had just researched this place and had all along save this idea for _one_ _last_ _bang_.' Sherlock states with his most serious face on.

_**.**_

'Our cancelled train is a no go, John. The next one departs from platform 1B.'

Normally I'd be the one to source out this information for the detective hates dealing with the mundane. Given that I'm prone to outbursts of anger with the railway system's failures – who isn't? – he pre-emptively took on the job himself.

'Half-an-hour?' I gruff, checking my watch.

'More or less', he answers, advisedly.

'Couldn't we take a taxi to the next train station?'

'The bridge is still being cleared of a mighty _Quercus_ _robur_ fall that cut off all traffic, remember?'

I huff and give in grudgingly.

'John', my friend starts softly. 'You once lived here.'

I smirk. Knew he couldn't drop it. I point out in the distance, over the fading train tracks. 'See that house with the wonky chimney above?'

He squints, trying hard to tell the typical brick and mortar British houses apart. 'Yes. Yes, I see it, John.'

'Well, then. It wasn't that one', I finish, and seal my lips tight as a tomb.

_He's a detective. Why should I spoil Sherlock's fun?_

_**.**_


	34. Chapter 34

_A/N: Some corporation (I can't mention over fears of copyright issues) made a crossover between a tv contest format and a fictional tv series. At least I think they did. I didn't actually watch it._

_But I took the idea and ran for the hills. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

_**Eager to start.**_

'Filmed for a game show on the telly, John? What a preposterous idea!' The well groomed detective adjust his snug fitting shirt in front of the mirror on the fireplace breast, inspecting minute creases with those insecurity bred attention and megalomaniac need to persistently excel of his.

I blink. 'Don't look at me, I didn't come up with this, _you did! _Said your clients—

'—_our clients—' _he corrects, naturally.

'—didn't see you as a person anymore, and you wanted to show them you're _human_.'

'Much unlike your heroic descriptions of me in your published material. See? You made me do this to us, with your unbounded adulation, John... Learnt to spell "tier" from "tear" yet?' he asks with a glance and a quirk of the brow.

I glare at the posh detective, all fantastically bouncy curls and not a wrinkle on his clothes.

_I'm a soldier. I live by my sword. My word is my sword... don't push me._

No. I still get some spellings mixed up once in a while, that's true.

Shaking my head I recognise in awe: 'Don't know how you roped me into this one, mate. I really don't.'

Sherlock's green eyes are scrutinizing me one second and mercurially distant the next – how does he do it with only the flickering reflected light from the fire lit in the hearth? – before he tells me:

'Had to. Mycroft practically begged me. Can you image the commercial viability of a show with just us two competing? It'd be prime time drama.'

_Or a hell of a comedy._

_**.**_

_**The make-up room.**_

'Sherlock...'

The detective lazing on a make-up chair hums, just to tell me he's vaguely paying attention.

'The lovely make-up artist here has finished on you in, what? Twelve seconds?' I ask, sarcastic.

He hums, agreeing. 'The light likes my face, apparently.'

'Well, she's currently applying a fifth fresh coat of _paint_ to my face, Sherlock.'

'Bags under your eyes, John. There's only so much highlighter contour she can use before you look like a lemur in front of the camera.'

'How I look is part of who I am!'

'Nonsense, John. We all know why you've got dark bags under your eyes.'

_Nightmares and sleepless nights... I asked you to keep that in confidence, remember?_

'Tea, John. You drink excessive amounts of caffeinated tea. It doesn't take a world renowned detective to tell you the lingering effects of caffeine by the gallon.'

_**.**_

_**The contestants.**_

'Okay, there's three of us. You, me and Mycroft (who owes us his soul now; _by the way, we need that in writing_). Is there going to be anyone else?'

We are being ushered to the filming section. On a raised stage there are several cooking sections arranged as identical branches. Ovens, batter bowls, balances, stove and sink. This is a baking competition after all. The type that could attract the devious mind of Mycroft Holmes.

'Presumably so.'

He's referring to the six benches altogether.

Unnerved, I look over my shoulder. No one's behind the movable cameras yet, but there are extra cameras, set on view points from the corners of the room, next to the ceiling.

Steady on, soldier. You've got Mrs H's world famous Lemon Drizzle cake recipe, she's kindly lent you. So maybe you're not a Holmes, maybe you're not even into baking, but you can win this. Or, in the least, don't look like a complete idiot whilst trying to survive this.

_**.**_

_**The competition.**_

Lights on, film metaphorically rolling, the director is whispering instructions on camera angles, the atmosphere in the room is starting to tense up. I take a first moment to analyse my competition. Sherlock is at my right side, measuring some milk with deadly precision.

Not contented with the nice kitchenware, as soon as the mark was set he's whisked measuring cylinders, syringes and a graduated pipette from his coat's inner pockets. _Deep pockets, yeah, he's done a few modifications to his beloved coat over the years._

Sherlock Holmes sheds his bulky coat as soon as his laboratory stash is out.

'The chemistry reactions and changes of state involved in baking are incredibly elementary, John. Precision and proportion, however, are the key, much like elements in a stable compound or the equal sides to a reversible equation.'

I nod, a bit bewildered, particularly as I lay my eyes on his notebook (I'm quite sure that's the new notebook of mine that went missing last week) fully scribbled with jolted down chemical reactions, organic stereochemistry of flavonoids and studies on the degradation of double bonds in fat molecules at different cooking temperatures.

Right. I'm not entirely sure about how it will _taste_, but I can anticipate Sherlock's cake to win the Nobel prize for chemistry soon.

Making a mental note that _this_ _is_ _war_, and I shall not be intimidated, I look on over to the sorcerer's apprentice, positioned right behind her mentor. Molly has borrowed some tools from work too. She's got a white lab coat and a determined look behind the face shield, as she slices some juicy oranges. She doesn't even blink as the juice splatters on her face shield.

I don't know what to say. Maybe she's allergic to oranges all of a sudden.

Lestrade, I notice, has his sleeves rolled up and grins confidently back at me – _"we've got this, mate!"_ – and Mrs Hudson is fussing over a nice cameraman to get her a set decor teapot and cups from a high shelf, determined she will make everyone a nice cuppa before she even starts on her own bake. She's got so many bakes under her belt she doesn't seem worried at all.

_**.**_

_**The case.**_

There's a sixth contestant. Sherlock would call him _the control test._ He's unknown to us and got brought in to represent the ordinary guy, we presume. Or for comedic purposes, for he keeps dropping the metallic mixing bowl on the floor, where it spins and thunders before a halt. It's making me nervous, as it happens just behind my back, where I can't see or anticipate it – a bit like mortar shells on distant wars.

_Great!_ Now I've distracted myself. Have I added the sugar yet?

'Sherlock... _Sherlock!'_ I hiss.

'What is it, John?'

'Have I added the sugar yet?'

'How should I know?'

'You always know everything! How can you not know?' I accuse him of holding back on me in my hour of need.

'There's a way to find out, John.'

I squint. 'What way?'

Very theatrical, very deliberate, that's how he lick his own cake bowl, slurping on his finger.

'You _didn't _just—! We're on national television!'

He shrugs. Behind us, Mycroft, in his three piece suit, shudders.

Damn, Sherlock's always playing an audience.

I look down on my cake batter, wishing I could x-ray it or something. My fingers drum intermittent patterns on the worktop surface, just barely on the limits of my consciousness. I decide to risk it. Add sugar. No one likes a bitter cake anyway, right?

The metal mixing bowl of doom clatters on the floor again, making me jump. A second bowl joins the first, mine being ceramic and shattering to bits.

_Damn it!_

I look up to the poor man, who looks back at me as if he's having a minor stroke.

In the end we're awarded an extra ten minutes by the production team. That's how long we've been at it so far. All we get beforehand is two minutes off whilst a cleaning crew mops the floor.

I start over as soon as I get to my station, determined not to forget the sugar this time.

Behind me the ordinary man let's out frustrated sounds; he can't find his mixing bowls. He even suggests someone took them, _namely_ _me_, which is preposterous as I was within his sight at all times. He knows that too. We almost had a fight by the bins.

That his four mixing bowls have all disappeared is a locked room mystery as far as I see it.

I just hope no sharp eyed spectator at home notices the extra bowl in each of the other four contestant stations.

Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock doesn't always expose the criminal, he's more into the actual solving the crime. But he's great at Morse code, as well as a great illusionist. I'll try to see how he's done it once the footing is broadcasted on national television.

The ordinary guy representative forfeits in a belligerent manner, unsuited for great bakers anyway, and is escorted off site.

_**.**_

_**The bakes.**_

'Sherlock, that is fantastic!' I'm not too proud to admit when the other contestants have done marvellous bakes. The consulting detective has baked a surprise centre, five layered, tempered chocolate covered masterpiece, shinny and beautiful. How in the world did he get the time remains a mystery to me, and I wouldn't put it past the competitive genius to have store bought it and sneaked it in for his creation from another modified pocket on his bulky coat. But I can keep a secret. It's what mates do.

Molly has a nice two layered bake with girly colours and sprinkles. A nice sugary treat done to perfection. I won't mention her use of equipment from the morgue (after properly sanitised, of course).

Mrs Hudson has a perfect Lemon Drizzle cake and that's hardly fair. Her humble creation is the staple of generation upon generation of landladies. Her Lemon Drizzle cake is the sheer foundation of London's rebuild after the Great Fire of 1666. Her Lemon Drizzle cake could win wars, or spark them... I glance over my shoulder to my bench and calculate the shortest distance between my cake and the nearest bin.

Lestrade has baked a lopsided but sturdy Steak and Ale pie. It's definitely what you'd expect from the detective – unless he'd go down the route of the clichéd police force donuts – but is savoury even within the rules? It smells lovely, though. Hope he plans on sharing with the guys later.

Mycroft's creation is unique, talented, intricate and overthought, as expected. A mastermind six tiers bake of immaculate design, complete with frilly sugar flowers (proper, identifiable by a botanist sugar flowers, separated by continents of origin; hence the Antarctic and Artic tiers have snowflake icicles designs instead). I bet it tastes exquisite too. Mycroft has had plenty of time to think this creation through. I'd say he's been working on it since he was seven years old.

One bench remains empty, kept included for the sake of symmetry, I gather. It reminds me of the late Jim Moriarty. He would have loved this exposure to the world. It's actually quite a lack of foresight that the biggest master criminal the world has ever seen, a fluid con artist and imaginative wonder of evil, did not turn politician or game show host. I guess he didn't like to be tied down. Jim would have made some Devil's cake, with a surprise explosive core. He did like his semtex. And the chance to broadcast it all on national television?

'John?' Sherlock calls me from my abstractions towards what he can only see as an empty workstation.

I return the look after a shiver has successfully run down my spine.

'Are the judges still out?' I ask.

'Presumably Mycroft is still trying to bribe them.'

'Mycroft is right there', I point behind us.

'Oh, he doesn't like to have his hands dirty... Mycroft, stop licking the icing off your cake!'

'It's been judged already!' is the muffled retort.

I turn abruptly. The elder Holmes just about fesses up:

'All this wait is making me highly indisposed. I've pondered less when advising the Prime Minister on a dictatorial regime's use of the secret nuclear weapons it had access to.'

I scrunch my face. They're mad, the Holmes brothers. I hope those cameras have been turned off by now.

_**.**_

_**The winner.**_

Mycroft's cake wins joint-first it in the end. Although for the final shots of the winning creation they have to hide the bit with the icing missing. No one at home will be the wiser. Mycroft will make sure of that, just as I'm sure he'll gloat forever on this win.

Sherlock dismisses his brother easily: 'I've arranged it so, brother dear, I knew how important this simpleton show was to you.'

Mycroft is not above flicking chunks of icing and sugar flowers on his brother's dark curls. Sherlock fights back in kind.

Joint-first winner Mrs Hudson is more humble for the role, as she shakes her head and deems all creations just so beautiful. 'Everyone deserved to win. If you just look at Molly's colourful design, and the inspector's fine dinner, and John's... a nice doctor and all—'

_**.**_

_**After the show.**_

'Ever thought of doing a quiz show, brother of mine?' Mycroft insinuates himself as we all gather at the pub. When I say Mycroft, I actually mean a walking trophy slides into our line of sight before we see the actual man holding it.

As for his idea, I don't want to be a part of that, thank you very much.

_Put the Holmes brothers and John Watson on a quiz show. The sibling pair competing for all the answers before the presenter finishes asking the questions and I, dozing off in my seat. I mean, I know I'm clever but the presenter would be going:_

"_In literature, what was the year—"_

_Mycroft would interrupt: "1984."_

"_That's correct, Mr Holmes!"_

_Sherlock would scoff "You would know this one, of course"._

The younger brother rolls his eyes. 'Why not a reality show, while we're at it?'

They both shudder in unison.

_A reality show type of several contestants living 24/7 in a house could seem like a fun idea but, seriously, no tv corporation would accept the liability of Sherlock's little experiments onsite... And both Sherlock and I are already too used to that with Mycroft's spy cameras anyway. After all the censorship the higher moral values of a nation would demand to keep the network from shutting down, Mycroft would have a huge clean up to do so we wouldn't be accused of seventeen different legal offenses and anti-social behaviours (all with just cause; okay, some of them), there would be so very little clean footage to broadcast._

I sigh and roll my pint glass on my hand, pensive. 'I guess I just don't belong on the telly.'

Sherlock smirks. 'Just drop it, John. You're too gullible anyway. Did you really believe Mrs Hudson gave you the correct Lemon Drizzle cake recipe?' he chuckles.

I knew it didn't look right! I glare over my shoulder at the landlady, having a good time with Molly and Lestrade in the next table, and give up, in an amused chuckle.

_**.**_


	35. Chapter 35

_A/N: Last recurrent lab rat plot. -csf_

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_**.**_

I'm curled up at the long sofa... No, of course not, I'll disentangle myself and put my mismatched socks cladded feet back on the floor the moment I hear anyone but Sherlock come near. I'm a soldier, I won't have Lestrade or a client see me curled up with a book and a cup of tea, hogging the cushions and the Afghan blanket. I'm thoroughly enjoying my book, but it makes for dense reading and I'm digesting it slowly as I go, at the speed of my own mundane genius – not everyone is Sherlock blooming Holmes. That's when I glance at the table by the windows, particularly to the wire cage that sits there nowadays, with a safe, unharmed, slightly bored, rescued lab rat that Sherlock insists is named after me.

Because all of Sherlock's companions should be called "John". I'd say it's a memory problem, but this is Sherlock, he's got an encyclopaedic memory in every other regard – except, notoriously, for first names other than my very common, and short, first name.

John II, the lab rat, is a feisty, clever creature with his own merits. He incessantly explores the cage's constraints and the sliding door, closed shut obviously, squeaking happily as he chews on the wire mesh.

I sigh and return my focus to the borrowed book in my hands. I have to reread a particularly difficult to follow paragraph. How does the author come up with these things?

I wonder where Sherlock is, too. At this time of day he's often picking up his beloved violin, soothing the familiar landscape of 221B with melodic and richly stringed melodies.

From the cage the squeaking intensifies suddenly. I look on and find the stubby but athletic, white furry body of John II pressing against the cage's gate, lifting the gate to freedom with his head – his red eyes on high alert and whiskers twitching furiously at the first taste of escape. He stills and looks me straight in the eye. I stare back at the adventurous creature.

Does Sherlock know about this? Is it part of the experiment?

I wouldn't have put it past Sherlock to have taught this neat trick to his pet rat.

In a mad dash for freedom, John flees from his jail before I can lift a finger. I see him run across the table top, jump to Sherlock's nearby chair, climb down the leather with ease from his tiny clawed feet and disappear behind the mantle's cast iron screen.

Maybe he's paying a visit to Mrs Hudson downstairs. If I hear a loud shriek and a pile of dishes breaking on the floor I'll know that's where he went.

'John.'

I jump with a start of my own as I recognise Lestrade's voice, Sherlock is already crossing the threshold, unwinding the blue scarf from his long neck.

Caught in a homely reading snuggle in the sofa, I feel my cheeks reddening as I quickly sit up straight, toss away the comfy blanket – and even put away the book.

'Hi, Greg! What brings you here? Case?'

He nods, glancing at Sherlock, whose cooperation he must get if he's to have any chance of closing some harassing case. Must be a tough one to crack. Greg Lestrade is very good on his own. He just needs Sherlock's help for the occasional genius level ones. Which suits our friend just fine, as he despises the ordinary with vigour. Their synergy perfected by years of knowing each other well.

The inspector's amused eyes gleam as he still catches a glimpse of my homely stance. He's not about to let this one go, I sense. One last glance at Sherlock – who is quickly consulting old manila files in the metal cabinet across the room – and Greg's hand reaches for my book, with a joke already forming on his lips. His eyes roam the title and he squints. He's found a mother load, it seems. Before he can say anything, I blurt out:

'Sherlock, your pet rat has run away from home, you know.'

I can see the genius' shoulders shrugging. 'He'll return, worry not.'

'How do you know that?'

'I named him John, haven't I?'

I blink, and let that one go.

'He's a rat. He hardly knows his own name.'

Sherlock glances over his shoulder, his searching hands stilling at once.

'John is cleverer than people around him give him credit for. Why he likes to keep a humble façade over his talents is beyond me', he adds, way too serious not to be of the utmost honesty.

Greg has been opening and closing his mouth. He finally rediscovers his voice as he says:

'Did you say _rat_?'

'Yes.'

'Sherlock has a pet rat?'

'_Had_, by the looks of it', I retort.

The detective kips, lazily:

'He'll return. John is fiercely loyal.'

I roll my eyes to that; Sherlock really must be messing with me now.

The detective adds, with a quick flash of a genuine smile:

'There he is, and he brought the family.'

We all freeze at the numerous hoard running through 221B. White furry rats of all sizes, juvenils and adults, climb the chair, and the desk, and gather inside the opened metal cage, as if that was the most normal thing to do.

Greg shrieked, and climbed my chair for safety in high ground. Sherlock seemed to be tallying them as they got in, one after the other, before he finally delivered a chunk of cheese, and gently closed the gate on the family.

'Soon we'll need a bigger cage, John. Take care if that for me, will you?'

I clear my throat. 'Sherlock, did you just get cheese out of that filing cabinet?'

'Yes, of course. That's where I keep the Camembert', he retorts logically. 'Entirely unsuitable for the Gruyère.'

'What about Lestrade's case?'

The inspector is still playing "the floor is lava" on top of my chair.

Sherlock grabs his violin case and opens it without any rush, slowing down time in 221B.

'John, you were reading my quantum physics volume as we came in. Unable to hide it under a cushion, it was inevitable that Lestrade saw it as he looked for something to embarrass you with, namely your reading choices, because apparently that's _what blokes do_ to one another. Will you kindly retrieve the antiques shop receipt stored between the book's pages, for a similar pewter teapot to the one found at the crime scene? I will then convince Lestrade to direct got an analysis of both teapots alloy as 85 to 95% tin, and the remaining being copper, antimony and bismuth. On the murder teapot Lestrade will also find arsenic, heavily coating the inside of the teapot in the form of green fabric dye. A heavy metal content that survived to the day, as the teapot was stored under an attic support beam for over a century, before being sold as an antique, found as a bargain and used, not very well washed either, by the unsuspecting victim. An accident, Lestrade, not a planned out murder. Most disappointing. Death by teapot. _John, I hope I'm not causing you significant distress.'_

I smirk, and he smirks back. I go through a lot of tea, that's a fact.

DI Lestrade looks baffled and bewildered now, as he takes in the genial deductions.

'And the lab rat family, Sherlock? Can you explain that too?' I challenge.

'Just drop it, John', he tells me, poising the bow over the violin strings, elegantly. 'Bach always seems to summon my dear friend John. That's an irrefutable fact. May I suggest you snuggle up and reread the chapter on the string theory? It's really a cornerstone to the whole concept of the book, John, and music will stimulate your brain synapses, making it easier for you to process the information.'

The git is probably right, I notice, and decide to ignore the DI frantically ordering analyses to the forensic team over his phone from his stance, on top of my armchair, one foot heroically angled atop the armrest. I just hug the Union Jack pillow, saved from Lestrade's trampling by serendipity, and resume my peaceful study of Sherlock's book, munching on some Camembert cheese and crackers.

I notice John the lab rat surreptitiously sprinting across the rug towards DI Lestrade's jacket and smirk. So small and eager to go on an adventure already. Maybe Sherlock named him right after all.

I wonder if we can get a bunny and call him Moriarty. That would drive the detective right out of his mind.

_**.**_


	36. Chapter 36

_A/N: It just grew unplanned, like most do. -csf_

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_**.**_

'Tell me about yourself, John.'

The woman slowly pacing never breaks eye contact as she slowly circles me. I'm her target, a retired army doctor strapped tightly to a chair in some lost warehouse, with no one out there looking for me.

'There's really not much to tell. I'm the common guy.'

She smiles, half-amused, but the smile is sterile and won't spread to her elegant features. Yes, this is a woman to die for; or so does she think, according to her poise, the expensive clothes, the danger laced in her words.

Yeah, I fell for it. I'm the idiot.

She asked for my help, looked lost on the street. A good Samaritan is a dangerous role to play these days.

A true hero is best defeated by his own deeds.

She snaps my attention back to her bright red lips by grabbing hold of my chin and forcing it her way. Our eyes lock on each other's before her words ghost whisper across my face.

'There must be something you can tell me. You are Sherlock's partner in his exploits.'

'You're right; I'm waiting, any day now, for the religious authorities to recognise me as a saint', I quip. 'Hey, you're good at this, ever thought of doing counselling?' I raise the sarcasm level a notch. 'Might want to invest in a proper sofa, this chair is not that comfy...'

She hisses, letting go of my face. My chin throbs. She's got a good grip, I should keep that in mind.

'Tell me about Sherlock Holmes.'

The woman's voice is languid and unhurried, benefiting the anachronic look with the long evening dress, the dark lipstick and permanently surprised eyebrows migrating towards the immaculate hairstyle. She paces again, jittery like a caged animal, before elegantly sitting over a crate, mindful of her dress. She glances at me mockingly coy, then shifts in her fake long chaise, exposing what an era once called "legs that go on forever".

In the noir era this overly feminine woman would be a stereotype of a wicked woman with few morals about to crash into a bad ending. That's a role she seems to have taken up by choice, as she balances a dainty but deadly handgun on her knee, steadily aimed towards the man tied up to the uncomfortably hard chair in front of her.

Right, keep her distracted from that deadly gun she's carrying. Talk about the detective – _that should be here by now!_

In reality he might not even know I'm gone. Why would he? Still—_ he's Sherlock Holmes_.

'Sherlock is... brilliant. Really brilliant. I don't really understand him most days, though. I guess that's part of his talents. Unintelligible as a genius most days, he is. And, of course, you never really know if he's being incredibly awkward or a huge jerk. He probably doesn't know it himself. He... is my best friend. The one I can always count on. He always comes to help.' I clear my throat and explain: 'He'll come to rescue me today too. And I should let you know he doesn't take kindly to folks who kidnap his friend.'

She leans forward, the light bouncing off her platinum hair in shimmery waves.

'I'm counting on his rescue. I want to meet Sherlock Holmes.'

I just about catch myself before I roll my eyes; her gun is aiming steadily at my beating heart.

'He won't fall in love, you know? He's not that type.'

'What type is that?'

'Human.'

'He's not human', she surmises, mockingly.

'Not like the rest of us, I mean. He doesn't quite feel things like us, you know. Love, anguish, guilt – I don't think he's quite proficient on those. Maybe it's his looks. And definitely the slim suits. He gets all this attention and it barely registers. Married to his work, he says. His work is often rotting corpses and gory crime scenes. That would make him more of a vampire than a detective, huh?'

'He cares about you.'

'Does he, now?' my voice goes steely cold. 'When he's not rushing off a crime scene and leaving me there stranded in the pouring rain while he's in a nice warm cab on his way to Buckingham palace? When he pulls me out of bed at three in the morning to go stroll about the morgue, looking for one corpse with an identifiable scar on his big toe?'

'You always follow him?'

I look away.

'Yeah. I care about him. That much is true. He has a tendency to get into trouble. Of course I'll always follow him.'

She smirks, amused.

'John, you know Sherlock Holmes better than anyone in this world.'

'No.' I shake my head. _There's someone else. Big brother Mycroft. He could dissect Sherlock's personality. But I'm the one who can tell you what to expect from the unexpected._

She leans back, impressed. 'Someone knows Sherlock better than you.' Then her lips twitch to a simile of a smile. 'Don't feed me clichés. Don't tell me Sherlock knows himself better than anyone.'

I grump naturally. 'Sherlock is very oblivious about himself, trust me on that. For a man who spends his life observing and studying others, he's really dumb as to his own motivations and feelings. Sometimes he's really oblivious on everyone else's too. Emotions are not his strong suit.'

'What is Sherlock's strong suit?'

'Logic. Cold hard facts. Mathematics and analytical reasoning. That sort of lifeless, fun-less things.'

'And that's where you fit in, John. You help him navigate the real world. Make him behave, translate the social cues, and even clean the shared flat.'

I shrug as much as I can. 'Someone needs to clean the place. It's not only me. There's Mrs Hudson, the landlady, who lives below us. She often does a spot of dusting.'

The platinum blonde is amused. 'There's a woman in Sherlock's life. She's the housekeeper.'

'Most assuredly she isn't, she keeps telling us she isn't.'

'How... familial this all sounds, John.'

'Excuse me?'

'Those Sherlock surrounds himself with, they care for and protect him with the loyalty of family.'

I huff, amused, eyeing the forgotten gun balancing on a knee. 'You should know.'

'John?'

'Although I must say your boss Mycroft Holmes has already testified to the Firm's policy of kidnap and interrogation.'

The woman smiles, in control.

'Very good, John. You are cleverer than you are given credit for.'

'It's the side by side comparison with Sherlock Holmes that undoes me, really.'

'Yet he's not showing up... Should I take you home now?'

'Only if you promise never to see me again. You know, like my usual dates...'

We both sigh at the same time. Possibly she's unlucky at love just as I. Or maybe I missed something.

Mycroft's new assistant gets up, elegant and all languid gestures and laden glances.

'Sherlock will be here in no time to set you free, John.'

'No, wait! Why am I still tied up to a chair?'

'So you won't follow me', she deadpans just like her half-brothers.

'No wait!'

Helpless, I watch her leave by a door at the end of the empty warehouse. Just at the same time, Sherlock Holmes, the one and only, enters through another door and rushes over to free me, disregarding his own safety for my rescue.

'Mate, you've got to quit the family business', I state, sighing in relief as the tight ropes fall from my wrists.

'Just drop it, John. My family likes to keep an eye on me.'

'Keep an eye on you? The Holmes could teach a thing or two to the Italian mafia! Besides I thought I had been screened enough!'

'You have. Mycroft is training his new recruits, by the looks of it. Welcome to the Family. They now they keep an eye on you too, John.' He presents me with a goofy smile, his green eyes still a touch vulnerable, uncertain if this time I've been stretched too far. He's fear of losing me is out in the open now.

'It's a lifetime membership, huh?' I gruff.

'If you've got no better offer', he smirks.

I just shake my head. No better offer, no. Nowhere else I would want to be.

_**.**_


	37. Chapter 37

_A/N: Tough week. This beginning is all I've got to give. Happy Chinese New Year. -csf_

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_**One.**_

Sherlock's fast monologues are a quick paced delight that incites the adrenaline already running in my veins. The brilliant detective has just pieced together who the triple murderer is and we're on the hunt to apprehend him. Preferably before the Scotland Yard gets here. Sherlock and I like to think of them as _backup._

The happy detective is still chirping quick snippets of deduction –_ brilliant! –_ as he trails around the front of the house, looking for a backdoor entrance. He'll use it like a backstage entrance to his cosy stage under the stoplight, where he'll uselessly confront the culprit, while I keep the triple murderer from exerting a fourth murder (that of the renowned Baker Street investigator) and amicably urge him to confess his crimes for a more lenient sentence.

I can tell, by the monotone trail of Sherlock's brilliance, that he's finding no way into the house where our criminal currently barricades.

I, for one, can see a perfectly good way in. There's a ladder propped against the roof by someone who has been cleaning the dead leaves from the guttering. It's not a far stretch from the open bedroom window...

'_He then proceeded to hide the wife's body inside the freezer in the garage, hoping no one would see him as he left the house. What he didn't count on was the freezer being too full! Pre-Christmas shopping, you know how it is, everyone ritualistically acts as if the world was coming to an end and stockpiling was a major life or death necessity. What does the murderer do to his latest victim? He takes some food out of the freezer and chucks it out of the high window. Finally, the body stashed away, he leaves through the open garage door. The neighbours are, hours later, menaced by the persistent flock of seagulls that rounds on the house, picking at the discarded food. Paradoxically, that's what brings the police round in the first place, the suspicion that the seagulls might be urban decomposers of a murdered occupant of the house... Brilliant, isn't it, John? How will you name this case?'_

I shrug, climbing the ladder steadily.

'Not sure. You'll just have to wait and see.'

'You know I'm not a patient man, John! Oh, and by the way, whatever you do, don't climb the—'

A sharp crack of rotten wood prevents him from properly finishing his sentence.

_'—ladder.'_

_**.**_

'From the number of times one of us gets injured, Sherlock, you'd think we'd have convinced Mrs Hudson to install a stair lift at Baker Street.'

'Nonsense, John, she must keep her hip mobile or it will only become worse over time.'

The doctor in me is in too much pain to decide on the accuracy of such declaration. Mrs Hudson won't let me have a look at her herbal soothers or her x-rays.

Sherlock's been helping me up the stairs. It's been taking an inordinate amount of time.

'Wait. Hold it. I need a rest', I announce abruptly, out of breath.

'John, it's only been thirteen out of the seventeen steps.'

I collapse of the old greyed thirteenth step anyway, sliding from his grip like gelatine.

'Sherlock, I've got fractured ribs', I hiss, fighting back tears of frustration and humiliation. _Captain Watson does not cry... Yeah, well, the captain is not always right._

Sherlock looks like he's so ruddy lost, right now, hands hovering over my frame, uncertain of where to touch without further injuring me.

Then, suddenly as it's there, it's gone, and his posture changes to one of incredible distance, sanitizing whatever care and attention he was giving me.

'Broken ribs didn't stop you the last time', he mutters, resentful.

I squint. Under suspended breath, I ask: 'Are you talking of that time the insane illusionist was about to saw you in half inside the box?' Too many vowels, vowels are painful, _vowels are evil._

'I had it all under control, it was a trick, done with mirrors and black boxes, John.'

'It was a good trick, how the hell was I supposed to know?' I defend sharply, tense, then gasp, clutching to my side.

'You're the doctor, make a sensible conclusion!'

I blink, lights on these stairs have never flickered down this much. Everywhere around me in being soaked in pitch black.

Why is the stained glass window not working? There should be daylight yet.

'John?' There's a frightened undertone to Sherlock's usually self-assured voice.

I liked him best when he was playing a jerk.

It frightens me to see Sherlock's concern. My friend is a genius, and if a genius thinks this is bad, _it's really bad._

'I'm terribly sorry for this, John. Berate me later', he directs me as he scans my body as if I was one of his challenging corpses at the morgue. Deciding on a course of action most likely not to aggravate my injuries, he gently encircles my torso and forces me up, taking care to support my weight.

Stretching straight is agonising. I'm not sure I slump against my friend or if it was him, leaning my smaller frame against his protective towering one.

'Did you take your meds, John?'

A flash of anger crosses my frail body, tensing it up further, if at all possible.

'I'm a doctor, remember that, genius?'

'Your self-righteous anger is somewhat adorable if wholly misplaced. John, your answer will determine which way we go from here and I'm not holding you up until such time when your ribs are healed. Have you taken your meds and are still suffering agonising pain?'

'I'm absolutely peachy, damn it!'

'Forgive me if I won't take your word for it. Tell me, John!'

I let my forehead rest against his collarbone and bury my words in his scarf:

'I don't need meds. Just a bit of a nap, that's all. I'll be just fine when I wake up.'

Sherlock lets out an all suffering long sigh and gently manhandles me up the rest of the stairs.

_**.**_

'Here you are, John. You require some sustenance.'

I open groggy eyes to the kind offering. _Pot noodles._ I'm touched. He reached the back of the kitchen cupboards and mastered the electric kettle for that.

Shaking my head minutely to the offer, I sink back against the sofa's cushions.

'You've got clients coming over. I should go upstairs', I state responsibly. Yet make no real effort to move, rooted to the spot by catastrophe.

'I'm not taking clients', he declares. 'My blogger is unwell.'

'You can solve cases without me, Sherlock.'

'Naturally', he agrees, coolly. 'The real question is whether I would want to', he adds with a huff, walking away.

I squint my friend's way.

I'm touched by his tenacious loyalty, but dread to think how long it can last without damaging the restless genius.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	38. Chapter 38

_A/N: Short and late, sorry. -csf_

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_**Two.**_

Rain splatters on the cold window pane as I stare on blankly. Straining drops chasing each other playfully through established paths, sudden contractions and changes in direction through unexpected gusts of wind. It's a mindless task, to observe the rain stained window, but I pursue it nonetheless, with the relentlessness of a mind adrift, hoping to anchor itself in some distraction, any distraction.

It's easier to be the numb soldier than the doctor right now. _Hold your position, wait for the call-back, keep steady soldier._

Behind me the dismayed screech of metal wheels on a trolley grate my brain with their disconcerting whine; but I won't turn. My attention focused solely on those rain drops drifting down the tall, cold glass surface of 221B's living room windows.

_It never stops raining._

The same rain peltered the cab windows yesterday, when we were heading towards the crime scene. Sherlock was energetic, enthusiastic and laconic as always. His high energy drawing me in to his maelstrom of brilliance, a vortex of light emanating from that beautiful mind.

I asked about the crime scene; at least I think I did. Sherlock adjourned tangible explanations and I accepted his stance knowing his mind was already overridden by hypothesis and statistics for similar crimes. Joining the pieces of the puzzle, focusing the picture they formed one at a time. When the time came, I would be told. Sherlock would disclose the crime, the clues and the culprit in his usual showmanship manner. I could afford to wait and get to know it all in one go. Let myself be awed as always, I enjoy it as much as my friend does.

I never thought there was anything I needed to know in advance.

I'm not a detective. I'm a doctor, a soldier, and now a sidekick, and it's exactly as a sidekick that_ I should have known more earlier_.

Sighing I shake my head to no one, seeking solace in the darkness as I rub my eyes harshly. The imprint of recent memories to stark a contrast against the darkness.

My sternum twinges painfully in sharp warning.

Yeah, I climbed a ladder. It had been rigged by the criminal. I had a nasty fall. Broke a couple of ribs. Some intercostal detachment, bruised ligaments and the ominous possibility of worsening my condition if I don't keep mostly to an unnatural immobility while they heal, unify again.

Angrily I look up, to that cold foggy window and glare at what I find in it.

The sunset is spreading over the city. The dusk brings out new reflections of the lit windows across the street, overlapping rooftops, lit lamplights, multi-coloured traffic lights interchanging mechanically, a city bustling independently from human command.

There is misery behind those anonymous residential windows, and shop window displays, of busses circulating on those streets and the front screen of the emergency vehicles waiting for the green light. Each of us independent of the others, oblivious even, just waiting to play our role in the interconnected humanity, a game of chasing twinkling lights, watched and imagined mindlessly from within the windows of Baker Street.

There are soft padded steps heading my way. Quiet, subdued, theatrical in their fabrication. Sherlock must have thought I was asleep. Seeing my eyes open, red rimmed and dark circled, he approaches with more determination. There is an electrical switch clicking and a soft light bathes the familiar space.

I keep watching the window. The rain less perceptible now, layered by the Pepper ghost imprint of the room reflected on the glass pane. The Damascus curtains framing the window only reaffirm the theatricality of a fragile reality.

Sherlock. Behind him, in the kitchen, tea mugs and nibbles on a metal trolley is the answer to the sounds I heard earlier.

'John?' my friend's soft voice is compassionate, caring and calm. I allow my eyes to drift back to source.

He looks a bit frazzled, despite the homeliness of the inside out t-shirt and the blue silk dressing gown framing his slim figure.

A loitering, damaged soldier is, despite all rumours, not an usual sight within our walls. Yes, we get hurt a lot. The risk comes with the job. But usually we're back on our feet before long.

I let him take a good look at me. He'll need to have a strong memory of my state to solidify his decision – the only he can come to – of leaving me behind as he pursues his next cases.

I'm too much of a broken man to follow him; and even if I fought the excruciating pain there could only come long-term damage, and no real support or backup for my friend in the Work.

'Hey, mate. Got a new case?' I ask, desperately swallowing back the bitterness in my voice. I ran out of luck. Not even Sherlock Holmes could have foreseen the upcoming disaster. I hold grudges on no one.

He blinks, then seems to ponder my words. His eyes – water coloured like the rain splatters on the windows – flicker in the direction of his laptop, abandoned on the desk. Finally he looks me straight on, with a determination that nearly startles me. 'Yes, a case', he agrees.

'So... Going out?'

He shakes his head, no.

Then abruptly he turns towards the kitchen. 'Made us dinner, John. You can't live of pot noodles, toast and tea.'

Mostly liquids, as I've found out chewing toast is ruddy painful, but he gets his point across.

'Take away?' I smile.

He hides a smirk and a blush, looking most interested to the fireplace mantel he clears: 'I cooked. Learned something once for a case. The world of Michelin starred French chefs is cut throat in Paris. _Literally_', he adds with too much enjoyment. 'The garnish section was one of the cleanest crime scenes I've ever worked in, apart from the gruesome garrotting. You could have eaten of that floor.'

'No, thanks', I retort automatically with a frown. 'Undercover work?' I gather. 'Did you start as a pot washer?'

Sherlock comes to take a seat on the coffee table, knowing full well he's got all of my attention now, the pain having recessed into the back of my conscious mind now I've got a distraction.

'They nearly kicked me out', he admits with a wide goofy smile. I smile too. Soon he's chuckling, good natured. 'They told me I don't know how to wash pots. I told the head chef he didn't know how to choose real saffron and was being sold inferior quality substitutes. I may have elaborated more on the topic than they expected. By the end of it I found myself promoted to the garnish section.'

'That's amazing.'

'It helps it was the dead man's job and they were desperate for someone to take over the section. As for the work itself, it was child's play. Memorize and reproduce at high speed. I even managed to collect samples and pick up trace evidence from every non-serrated single edged long blade knife there, and there were nearly sixty of those. With such pressure, high temperature and hot tempers, not to mention wide availability of weapons, it's a wonder how they keep their assassination quotas so low.'

I try my best not to chuckle – only because my grumpy ribs don't like the exercise.

Sherlock takes a deeper breath, nearly a sigh, looking me over. He seems pleased with himself, calmer, as he sees my despondency leaving me.

I realise Sherlock must have been overthinking this, wondering how to help me, cheer me up, when clearly all the genius needed to do was to be himself.

'Ready to try some food? I lifted the recipe of the murderous French chef, so we should be alright', he tells me.

I smile all the thanks I can't quite out into words yet.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	39. Chapter 39

_A/N: Still not British, a writer or have great medical knowledge. This one was a bit rushed, I must confess. -csf_

* * *

_**3.**_

'Sherlock, you don't want to be left out of this one! Exsanguination without a mark on the body! It's got to be one of the weirdest—'

The DI mounting the steps two at a time coming up to 221B is promising a dream case to Sherlock Holmes by yelling out across the stairwell at the marching rhythm of his pounding steps. It brings me up from a fitful doze with a start. I blink and the memories fall back into place like puzzle pieces to a complete picture.

I'm injured. Two fractured ribs, intercostal detachment and bruised... _internal stuff._ The extent of the damage on the muscles and soft tissue will only be truly known once the bigger portion of the inflammation goes down. That's why I keep immobile or to small, careful movements. That means no GP work, no house chores, and no running around London with Sherlock, fighting crime and saving lives. It's a dull existence. Refusing to confine myself to my bland room upstairs I've parked my damaged transport – _great! thinking like Sherlock now, are we?_ – on the living room's long sofa. It's padded, yet structured enough that it will do for now.

It also allows me to keep an eye on Sherlock.

Sure he needs someone to tell him once in a while to eat, to sleep, and to stop answering back to inanimate objects like the telly, the radio or the microscope. But if I'm being honest, I want to make sure Sherlock doesn't _keep himself_ from taking new cases that involve him leaving the flat.

The past two days, the amount of time since my unfortunate injury, he has solved twenty internet cases, three postal mysteries (including an anonymous letter double mystery) and yelled out a life saving deduction out of the window. Not bad at all. The only thing the consulting detective has so far been reluctant to do is to actually _go out_ to solve a case.

His loyalty and dedication are sights to behold.

They're also driving him bananas.

Sherlock needs his exercise as much as I do, on a regular basis. Rushing down rooftops, jumping over fences and dropping on storm drains is as much of a necessity to the restless minded genius as it is to me. I see it manifesting as an itchy feeling growing in the detective, making him squirm and linger on long peering times out if the living room windows, and I worry.

It's a bit like missing an addiction, and Sherlock is not going to have it easy fighting addictions.

And so I've been trying to convince him I'm perfectly fine to be on my own. The meds I'm taking – a colourful cocktail of painkillers, anti-inflammatories and antibiotics – leave me so floored anyway that I need to spend much of my day dozing off.

Sherlock is always close, either experimenting with the boundaries of science on the living room desk (I insisted, after the first purple smoke cloud issued from the kitchen and it was so painful to crank up my neck to find out what was going on), typing furiously in his computer. or melancholically playing soft tunes on his violin.

In fact, today, as Greg prances up the seventeen steps to 221B, Sherlock Holmes is concentrating hard on a row of tall wine glasses, filled with different amounts of water, that he's mastering to circle the rims to the tune of Rule Britannia.

He intends to amuse me with that soon.

Of course he told me it was for a case, or for science, or to fend off enemy spies, or some other extravagant excuse.

I also asked him to play The Muppets tune. He was oblivious. We will now have a stay in, watch the telly night planned to improve his pop culture references.

Instead of a garbled glass tune, what we seem to get is an out of breath inspector gathering his wits by the open door.

'Sherlock, didn't you hear me?' he huffs, his energetic moves a solid contrast to the younger man's languid, detached even, responses.

The younger detective shrugs. 'Can't. Busy.'

'Busy with what?'

'Defending the honour of the empire.'

'By quenching your thirst with multiple glasses of water?' the inspector bravely tries to follow. Greg looks lost.

I make my presence known to our visitor by warning my flatmate: 'Sherlock... it's a good case. You should go.'

'Nonsense, John. I'm busy. Can't you see?'

Greg's finally laid eyes on me and he hisses in solidarity as he easily guesses the amount of pain I must be in.

'Wow, John, what- what happened?'

He glances at Sherlock and the detective bristles at once. 'Oh, I forgot to mention, inspector, that I've pushed my partner down some stairs, or through a window, or out of moving car? Have you been listening to your sergeant?' Sherlock hisses in acrid mockery. 'Thinking I could snap sometime and hurt John?'

Greg looks absolutely floored by the accusation. I try to raise myself up to debate this nonsense eye to eye but sag back against the cushions lightheaded and breathless.

Sherlock heads forward in feral steps and practically growls at Greg "I would never harm John intentionally" and carries forward to kneel by my side, suddenly all gentle touches and careful probes.

Greg stands strong, regardless. 'Cut the drama, you drama queen. I know no one more devoted to another than you and John. Clearly you are making a fuss so John doesn't notice you're not taking the case of a lifetime!'

I blink. Oh. That actually makes sense.

Before I can open my mouth, Sherlock grunts: 'I won't leave the flat.'

The DI searches my expression and seeing the micro nodding I'm giving him returns some clues: 'The guy's remaining blood had caked dry inside his veins, maybe something went wrong after he came out of hospital? Or some new kind of biological weapon from a secret laboratory facility?'

The ones of us who know Sherlock well know the way to goad the genius into taking a case is to spur him on with fantastical theories and brain storms. He can't seem to refrain from calling us all idiots, in his way, and feels the need to prove us wrong at once.

Sherlock snaps an angry look at the inspector. 'So _there were _marks on the body.'

'Yeah, I guess, but those were all accounted for by the trained nurses.'

'Search for the term _hemolytic transfusion reaction_ and learn, Lestrade', the detective preaches as if it was common knowledge.

The inspector blinks, bewildered. 'What's that?'

I retort myself, being a medical man: 'Uncontrollable clotting cascade. The victim was giving a high volume of the wrong type of blood. A malpractice that severe is rare, almost unheard of.'

Sherlock smirks, his _proud_ _of my blogger_ smirk, I notice. Fleeting but it cheers me up nonetheless. 'Search for suspects with access to the lab to swap blood type test results or vindictive nurses swapping blood bags. Most of all, _I solved it without leaving the flat and John._'

Greg is still somewhat bewildered but he knows by experience Sherlock has got it right, so he nods stiffly and marches out of the flat to go catch the criminal following the leads we gave him.

I sigh, as the flat returns to flat lined silence and inactivity.

'You know, you could have gone with him, Sherlock. You like a big audience.'

'Shut up, John. I can't hear the first notes if Rule Britannia if you are talking over it.'

I lay back with a smirk. He can't hide it from me. Sherlock loved his success, despite the small pool of spectators. He's preening, in fact, and I'm smiling proudly as I let my eyelids droop over tired eyes.

Soon I'll be back in action.

For now I rest, sure that Sherlock has my back.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	40. Chapter 40

_A/N: Still carrying on. -csf_

* * *

_**Four.**_

'John, take notes', my friend Sherlock directs me, without even a glance in my direction, as he circles a tight concentric tangent to the object of all his full attention.

I huff, amused, as I watch my friend's antics, still holding my bruised rib cage with a tight pressing arm around my mid section. Breathing is still a strained and laborious process as a couple of broken ribs easily get in the way of a natural process.

'John, a sample collection bag.'

I squint, a bit blank, and move not a muscle at all.

'John, tag it for me, will you?'

I watch his empty hand stretched out in my direction imperiously, and blurt out:

'Must we really _mimic_ _it?_ Sherlock, you went to a crime scene without me. As per my request, I may add. _It's alright._ You were doing crime scenes long before I came along. You don't need to _play_ _re_-_enactments_ for my benefit, Sherlock. The short version will do. Tell me what you saw and what you found', I insist.

From a crouching position on the living room rug, mid-air above nothing more than reconstructed memories, Sherlock turns eerily green eyes my way and opening them wide with an impossible to fake sincerity he assures me:

'I found nothing of importance because you were not there, John. You are an integral part of the process.'

I blink. That's both a big honour and a huge responsibility.

'Me? I'm just John', I remind him. 'You're the great detective, remember? I'm sure we haven't just swapped places, you know.'

'You are the proud possessor of a scattered and open imaginative thinking and the abuser of fugue lateral escapes of thought that benefit and compliment my own pristine highly perfected reasoning, John.'

'Wait! Just wait!' I hold up a hand at that. 'I know there's a compliment buried away _somewhere_ _in there_.'

He smirks.

'I also don't want you to lose practise, John, as you find yourself temporarily confined to the flat. Your injury is most annoying and so is the slow pace of healing.'

I nod. 'Tell me about it.' It's been two weeks _and too long._ Sighing I add: 'The re-enactment is a bit too much, though. Why don't you just skip the detail and tell me the broad strokes?'

'But then how will you blog about it?'

I shrug. 'Maybe you should pen it yourself, Sherlock. You keep telling me you could do a better job.'

'Anyone with a great command of the mother tongue can do a better job; no, don't be like that. What you lack in precision you aptly make up in narrative flair, and apparently your readers enjoy that.'

'_Our_ readers, Sherlock. They read my stories because the stories are about you.'

'No, they don't. They read because of the Work.'

'If that were so, they'd have stopped after the third spontaneous combustion or the second dry drowning. They like to know _how_ _we_ _do_ _it_. They are comforted that we make wrongs right in a time and place where so many feel unheard and left out.'

Sherlock raises himself slowly from the imaginary inspection over the rug.

'We're just like them. Flawed humans.'

I nod. 'That gives them hope.'

Sherlock Holmes turns away abruptly, a slight discomfort expressed in the way he readjusts his coat collar to realign with the sharp cheek bones. I just smile, proudly; that's my mate, a recalcitrant taker of credits but a natural hero.

For instance, take what lengths he has gone to in order to make me feel I'm still needed, I'm still part of the cases he was reluctant to take without me. Forget lateral thinking, my mate was afraid I'd feel abandoned because I'm really in no state to join him yet. Forget the demands of a crime scene investigation. Even the cab ride would be excruciating, every curb a painful hellfire and each pothole torture.

And yes, now that I'm calmer, enough to admit, to myself at least, I should probably have spent the past fortnight in some medical facility, being looked after – and made feel absolutely useless and broken. I should know, I had a nice bed and hospital-grade-breakfast time upon my return to London. Thinking upon it still gives me the blues. Sherlock knew I wouldn't want that. That's a personal scene I wouldn't want to revisit.

I'm also a doctor, which made it easier to abscond the hospital and set up all necessary care at Baker Street. It's really quite simple if you know what you are doing, and Mycroft Holmes knows it too.

Sherlock's older brother used his meddling prowess to have my meds delivered in (I had to sign for them for some reason; as if he thought Sherlock might use them for scientific research; he wouldn't), and even some accessibility features installed in the shower and my bedroom upstairs. I bet they'll be gone just as mysteriously as they appeared at the first lights of dawn the first day I'm considered healed.

The beloved long sofa got a lot more comfortable a couple of days after the main flat alterations as Mycroft got wind of my nights spent here, Sherlock often in his armchair pretending to do some research just nearby. The soft glow light and my friend's presence keeping bad dreams away, usually attracted by the sensory memory of pain.

I once tried my own armchair and to my immense satisfaction confirmed it was still lumpy, with a couple of broken springs and a permanent indentation the size and shape of my backside. Comfortable in its perfection as a tailored piece of furniture. Clients might take a seat on it from time to time, but it's only truly fitting for me. Even Sherlock squirms uncomfortably if sat there for too long.

Hence I had to start lying on the sofa with my head towards the door side of the sofa, and having to crank up my neck to see incoming guests was not a soldier's first chosen sofa orientation.

'Go on, Sherlock. Start from the beginning...' I urge softly, reclining back on the sofa's cushions, eyeing my friend attentively.

He nods, intense, captivating and wild.

I notice belatedly that whilst I was absent-mindedly contemplating the last couple of weeks in a time lapse blur, my friend was analysing my wellbeing in that mind reading act of his. He has found little cause for concern.

'If I must, John', he pretends not to enjoy his raptures audience but I can see the satisfied gleam in his eye. 'I arrived at the crime scene by cab. The driver was of eastern descendent, third generation by the father's side, judging by his hair's natural swirl patterns on the scalp. He probably is unaware of that fact, given he has clearly been brought up by overprotective parents that were self-made entrepreneurs renegading their past. Freshly shaven, clean sweater? A cabbie works by shifts, clearly, and this one was still out to impress, not yet disillusioned. Just started the taxi driving job, out to impress his boss, his pregnant girlfriend and her family, clearly. Nothing difficult to deduce. You would have seen it all for yourself, John, had you not stayed in for the night. The newbie cabbie managed a half decent job, nothing extraordinary in the way he drove, so I thought of you, John, and gave him a good review. Luckily it was a numeric review for I'm not so sure even your missed presence there would have inspired _words_ out of me.'

'You did well', I assure my friend.

'Lestrade was already at the crime scene, standing at the edge of the blue and white tape.' Sherlock waves in the direction of the kitchen to refer to our friendly inspector. 'Looking a bit frazzled by the excessive gore and brutality in the overkill murder. He pushed me aside at once.' In our living room, Sherlock walks towards the narrow shelving unit by the left-hand kitchen door – the one with the books and the floppy discs full of former military secrets that Sherlock rescued out of a foreign potency – and leaning towards it with an absolute look of innocence, Sherlock pretends to listen and answer.

'John is at home, where he belongs, inspector.

'Resting, of course.

'He's been eating, sleeping and passing urine as per the usual expectations for a man of his built and size, inspector...'

'_Sherlock!'_

'The difficulty with John seems to be an abhorrence of painkillers. John claims they make him groggy. John has also forbidden me to mix them in with foods that disguise their flavour and he can almost always spot them in his tea.'

'Sherlock...'

'John sends his love. Or his generic fondness. Or whatever generic greeting blokes should tell each other when missing important crime scenes. I really wouldn't know. I wasn't listening.'

'Oh, Sherlock.'

'The inspector sends his wishes of a speedy recovery and all that, John, and wishes me to inform you that he knows how "impossibly brattish" I can be.'

I chuckle. He proceeds, full of energy, walking forth now:

'The dead body lies on the rug. Dirty tarmac at the scene, too contaminated by a plethora of previous evidence, mostly unrelated to the case. Anderson is that desk fan, full of hot air and little more. Donovan is the gossiping teapot in the cabinet. Across 221B, by the music stand is the only witness to the murderer fleeing the scene.'

I look on to the music stand.

'A witness? You didn't say that before.'

'A ginger stray cat, standing on a shallow pool of water.'

I clear my throat. Sure, in a room full of inanimate objects taking the place of real life people, a stray cat is sort of a reliable witness.

'So the murderer was spotted by a cat.'

'Can't you see, John?' he retorts, full of energy and wild gestures when suddenly he stops into a dead man stance, glaring into the distance. 'Oh, that's it, John! You solved it! Oh, you may be a useless invalid to society—'

'_Oi!'_

'—but you are still my conductor of light! John, you are brilliant! I've got it!' He grabs his coat with his wide smile 'I'm going to Lestrade, don't wait up!'

'Wait! You didn't tell _me!_'

I watch him dash away through the flat door by cranking up my neck as much as possible, a general mirth filling me.

I'll follow my best friend in no time. Meanwhile I'm still part of the Work.

Sherlock double backs in a mad dash and takes a kneel dive by my side.

'The cat ate the goldfish, John. From the fish bowl overturned on the window sill, of which only a splashed pool of water remained as evidence. The cat ate the goldfish but how did he get to the goldfish if not by the open window the murderer left? The murderer is the first floor neighbour, and I'll tell you how he crafted a slingshot with a retractable projectile as soon as I come back. We've got all night to experiment and prove how the murder was committed, John!'

He waits, baited breath and wide eyes. I nod my approval and that sets him off, in a second dash out of 221B.

I'll be right here waiting for him.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	41. Chapter 41

_A/N: Apologies for the delay, once more. Real life and all that. -csf_

* * *

_**Five.**_

'_The Fish Bowl Bludgeon_. No, too crass. _The Drowning Goldfish_. No, too sad. _The Fish That Got Away_. No, it's definitely not to be mistaken for a dating advice blog...'

My lonely voice projects around the empty 221B's living room, as I ponder a new title for my blog entry. I really, really miss being able to pace about freely to help me think, but that's something that a couple of broken ribs quickly put a stop to. Of course I may still try, as Sherlock reluctantly left me to my devices for the shortest amount of time possible, as he rushed to convince DI Lestrade, at the crime scene, how the ingenious murder was perpetrated. In fact, without Sherlock, the mother hen in charge of keeping me forcibly resting, I might just pretend I'm normal for the fleetest of time and make myself a nice cuppa out in the kitchen. Won't Sherlock be surprised when he returns to a nice warm flat, fragrant with tea and toast scents – we should have some bread left in the upper cupboard – after an arduous chase across the damp alleyways of London?

Without lying, I could tell him I'd done it for him as much as for myself.

Raising myself slowly from the warm pressed sofa cushions, a stabbing pain flares on my side and I let go of a chocked grunt, as I fall back on the leather cushions, eyes screwed shut, gasping breaths, forehead creased in an useless battle stance. It's not like Pain will turn away when faced with my most obstinate stance.

Oops, Sherlock, I've just done a number on myself.

Wish you were here. _Please hurry back._

_I'm sorry I called you a mother hen. I'm sorry I fell down the ladder, I'm sorry for everything I've done wrong—_

My vision is blurred and my mind is suddenly blanketed by pain and it's _red,_ and it's _black, _ threatening to overpower me to oblivion.

Focusing my efforts into a concerted last ditch exercise I try to reach that bottle of painkillers on the coffee table, but it's miserably far off. A couple of inches out of reach and the pain spreads through my entire left flank, blindingly.

I fall deeper into the creased damp pillows, gasping in prostrated uselessness, fighting that oxygen that doesn't quite comply with breathing, short sharp gasps filled with vacuum.

_Don't fight it, it's just panic, you're going to be fine._ You always say that to your patients, doctor Watson.

_Even the ones you couldn't save, bleeding out into the lukewarm sand._

_And Sherlock, broken on a cold damp pavement._

Why didn't I think of him before?

The memory of my friend focuses me back again just long enough that I can pick up my phone and dial his number through the murky duskiness of the flat.

The dial tone sounds monotone across the flat's eerie silence. It repeats again and again until it cuts off.

_The number you tried to reach—_

A shiver runs down my spine, past events mingling with the present time. How many times did I try to call my absent friend in those dark lonely years, when I was sure there was no living soul on the other side to answer my call? Why did I persist then, the lulling force of habit appeasing me, and why do I persist now, when Sherlock is alive and healthy, but elsewhere engaged and focused?

_I needed to know I mattered. I needed reassurance that I didn't have to face my troubles alone._

Am I talking of now or then?

I'm pained, and exhausted, and becoming quickly confused.

I lean back and try to push through the pain, the physical as well as the emotional pain. Harnessing that darkness to protect me and abscond me from reality.

_**.**_

'Wake up.'

_Sherlock?_

I open a bleary eye to what my instincts have already proclaimed as wrong, deceitful, dangerous.

A stranger's face, etched in deep lines of anger and violence, greets my return to consciousness.

_Oh, I've let myself fall on this trap so easily._

I glance around before I allow a compromising response.

Sherlock is still absent from 221B. He might not even suspect the danger I'm suddenly facing.

Or he may, mysteriously, with that ESP of his when it concerns me. Sherlock never fails. Hardly ever. Most times. Well.

Twice the wrong for leaving me alone, hurt and defenceless, my back towards the flat's door through where this guy just waltzed in.

But that was my fault alone, I was the one insisting he'd _go_ _do_ _his thing._

'Who are you?' I demand to know, channelling the military left in me.

It won't quite carry the captain Watson's trademark thunder.

'The name's Chandler if you care to make a note', he mocks me. 'You're Sherlock Holmes blogger. For that you can get to watch. I came here to finish the detective off.'

I frown. _Right_. Always the same, these petty criminal types. _Revenge_ _and_ _fame_; never an inkling of creativity.

Damn it, Sherlock. You left me here to do the clean up again?

I'm not the conductor of light_ (and what is a conductor of light anyway? An electric cable? A light bulb?) _and I'm certainly not the muscled sidekick either, not at this moment in time, as I'm thoroughly diminished and vulnerable.

'Did you own a goldfish in a find bowl?'

'What?' he looks absolutely derailed by my question.

'If so, Sherlock is looking for you as we speak.'

He scratches his forehead and answers factually, well behaved, hoping to be the right wanted criminal, as if it would make him special.

'Not since I was 9 years old. I had a pet bunny once', Chandler replies, only too helpful. These criminal types often cherish some attention.

I quickly shake my head. 'No, it needs to be a goldfish.'

'I don't have a goldfish.'

I roll my eyes. 'Then Sherlock is hardly going to bother with you, is he?' I snap the tirade in the same tone as before, but time it just so that I'm throwing my laptop straight at his face. He ducks last second and the durable plastic cover nicks at his temple, disorientating him. No time for a rest, and I haul my rapidly tensing body over his crouching form, wrestling him to the rug, tying his wrists behind his back with the charger chord. A few quick, precise knots and he's tied up and not going anywhere soon. The defeated giant grunts in protest but I just kick him in the ribs to teach him some manners.

That movement almost floors me, as the electric lights in the flat and the sunlight from the outside all seem to flicker simultaneously.

Water gushing loudly at my ears and my hands are so cold, so eerily cold—

'_John!'_

My fall is hampered by soft hands and a gentle touch to my bruised, broken body.

_**.**_

'Shh, relax now. You were brilliant, John. Misadvised and hasty, you must have known I was on my way, but brilliant as ever.'

'Yeah, skip the eulogy, I survived the attack.'

Green eyes face me, perturbed and derailed by my bout of dark humour.

'Your advice was rubbish, by the way. Leave 221B and _go solve a case_? I thought I went where I wanted to go, the only place that could alleviate my momentary boredom, but 221B was where I belonged, where we both belong fir the foreseeable future.'

'Good', I say, letting out a long breath. 'Because I'm not moving out of this sofa anytime soon.'

'Then I shall play some violin, with your permission, John.'

I smile, and let my eyelids fall, languid, comfortably. The first string reverberations fill the living room with a warmth presence and a solid protection bubble wrapping invisibly around me.

'How did you know I was in danger, Sherlock?' I still ask.

He hums as a retort, and his answer becomes lost in his beautiful melody. I swear I can hear unspoken words along the soft tune of his own creation, and I let my imagination drift along the swirls and turns of Sherlock's heartfelt language.

_**.**_


	42. Chapter 42

_A/N: Yeah, I know, the Holmes siblings have been exhausted already, but here's to one brother who never materialised. Shame. Still, what's in a name? -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'You've got a guest, Sherlock.'

My words sound unfamiliar as I stop short at the glass sliding doors to the kitchen.

I really don't know how come I'm so surprised. My flatmate, the great Sherlock Holmes, is only human and he pays half the rent we owe Mrs Hudson, the landlady. If my flatmate, aka self-proclaimed sociopath genius and proficient hermit, wants to bring over a mate to watch the telly, I suppose he absolutely can.

We just never addressed this before.

I once tried, early on, sitting down with Sherlock to write the bare bones of our shared flat's peace treaty. We both thought it fair that the rent was divided halfway; although I got the impression that Sherlock didn't know how it got paid, he just trusted his brother Mycroft would take care of that. We both agreed that Sherlock wouldn't again damage the television with a homemade chemical concoction to measure the wavelength of the emitted electrical sparks, that he would not fill the bathtub with the Thames dredged mud to study the soil profile, and that he also would not stick detached fingers in the margarine tub (including any intentional or unintentional similarity to comical or rude gestures). In return I would not yell at him and vindictively ruin his ongoing black mould experiment, _again._

We spent a long time discussing the topic of guests, only we both assumed they'd be _my_ guests. He banned my girlfriends from the common areas if he was actively engaged in a case and happened to be in that room and, to be honest, although it limited me a lot because it turns out Sherlock is a workaholic, I could understand that request. Sherlock needs to step back from the buzzing crowds of investigators, the crime scenes gory details, and just recede onto familiar homely territory to separate from reality and analyse the facts as elemental data in his giant brain, safe in the knowledge that he won't be suddenly interrupted by strangers I'd let in.

That he always allowed _me_ around when his mind was so deeply enthralled that he wouldn't answer my calls, eat or drink, and sometimes wouldn't allow himself to sleep for days, was as unexpected as genuinely endearing – for it was always Sherlock all over.

The detective never pushed me away. Ignored me, yes. Closed his eyes and just blocked me out, presumably entirely, erasing my existence from his inner world. But I'm not a fool. I always knew better. I'd bring a cuppa and leave it at arm's length. Some time later I'd return and he had drunk the tea I had brought him. Never wondering who might have brought to him, or if it was poisoned (so many missed opportunities, hm-hm), nor letting the sudden apparition of tea snap him out of his mental processes at it should if he hadn't known me around.

Other times, in the middle of the night, I'd find cause to come down to the living room. I'd take a tired seat on the armchair, trembling hand and hair plastered to a sweaty forehead, ignoring the immobile wax figure wannabe on the sofa. I'd allow the soothing familiarity and close my eyes. Eventually dozing off, only to startle myself awake. And in that disorientated second coming back to consciousness I'd catch a glimpse of Sherlock watching me, genuinely attentive. Possibly counting my hyperventilating breaths, cataloguing the pale shade of discomfort veiling my expression, because he's Sherlock. I'd blink myself out of the shadows of a lingering nightmare and face him straight on, only to find my friend's eyes closed once more, his face etched in expressionless lines. A bit too perfect a mask, and I knew he was waiting to tell if I wanted to reach out, talk about it, or if I preferred to save face, gulp down the shadows, clear my throat, and focus on the homely flat and the calm presence guarding me from the sofa.

Some people say Sherlock is a jerk, always berating me for the most inane things I presumably have done. "John, the lamp has been moved two centimetres to the left, it's aggravating!" "John, my _Lactobacillus_ experiment is not to be shoved aside to make room in the fridge for your food!" "Stop thinking, John, your thinking is too loud!" Fine, I'll grant Sherlock can be a bit difficult, as I presume all real geniuses are, but he never, ever, had a go at me for the number of nights that, having solved a long case and finally allowed himself the grace of sleep, I'd wake him up with a badly timed nightmare from the depths of my damaged mind.

You see, he must have awaken.

Sherlock is not the only tenant to have shot 221B's walls. Only I can claim not to have been really awake when doing so.

Sherlock made me promise to remove the bullets from the chamber every night before I went to sleep. He knew better than to ask me to lock away my service gun. I wouldn't have been able to sleep without it at hand, not during those first months in London. And, later, the nightmares finally subsided, lulled back to restless dreams and no worse, by the constancy of 221B and my newfound worth by Sherlock's side.

For my part, I saw all sorts of people invading 221B, coming by Sherlock's request or to beg him to take on a new case. Clients, sources, spies, witnesses, investigators, the odd bomber or kidnapper... What they all shared in common was a connection to my friend's work.

221B was always a home and a detective agency.

A friend, for the sake of spending an evening in, was just never something Sherlock would bring.

He never has done so in all the months we've shared 221B, so I'm a little surprised.

Sherlock, on the other hand, acts as if there's nothing untowardly about this break in character.

'John, I want you to meet my guest.'

I squint at the genius. 'Hi, guest', I retort to the stranger, politely, basking on all the sarcasm I can put into a pointed look at the detective.

Sherlock must be in a childish sulky mood of his, for he clearly rolls his eyes at me. 'Does it really matter?' he asks me, petulantly, only to abruptly adopt a despondent Greek effigy look.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. Hard.

'Yes, well, I'm John', I recover to the man sat at the kitchen table. 'I'm Sherlock's flatmate.'

'_Sidekick_', the detective corrects, sibilating the Ss in discontent.

'Never pondered it may well be the other way around?' I say, brightly, just to annoy Sherlock.

He immediately plays along, feigning puzzlement. 'Honestly, no. But your sense of humour is in sparkling form tonight, John!'

I shake my head and return my attention to the newcomer. Maybe he's an informant. I'd do the _deduction_ _thing_, but Sherlock's the expert here. All I see are nondescript clothes, an average looking man, probably British, bulky and who has recently come a long way by plane, as evidenced by the small luggage by his chair and the boarding pass ignored half wedged in the case's pocket. A ticket from... no, can't read it.

'Hello, John!' the stranger beams pleasantly. 'Nice to meet you! Been hearing a lot about you!'

I shake my head quickly. 'Whatever he tells you, I didn't possibly gun down that gangster in the alley. I have a solid alibi.'

Sherlock shrugs. 'It's solid, alright. I crafted your alibi, John. Why would I undo my work and snitch on you?'

I frown between the two of them. 'Don't know. Just thought— I mean, Sherlock doesn't have a lot of friends and— Not that he's not a great guy, but he can rub off on you the wrong way, and—'

'You're rambling, John', Sherlock alerts me, idly twirling his hand. His green eyes are fiery and set on me, though. Like gemstones. 'Just drop it, John', he warns me fairly.

I take a deep breath and pull up a chair by their side. 'What I meant to say is, Sherlock doesn't have a lot of people he calls friends.'

The stranger blinks. Sherlock smirks, amused. His eyes still a fiery gemstone colour, though.

'And', I carry on, 'it's because some people think they can treat him wrong, because he's different. They can't handle the ways in which Sherlock is brilliant, and unique, and they are, quite frankly, insecure idiots that attack a brilliant man in order to try to feel better about themselves. So, what I'm trying to say here is, if you think, for a second, that you can do anything that I won't like to Sherlock Holmes, my best friend, well you can go right ahead and leave through that door. Let's call it a head start, because I'll make sure to hunt you down and make you pay. Get it?'

The kitchen fills with an eerie dead silence after my declaration. Sherlock is eventually the first to recover.

'John, this is my younger brother', he solemnly introduces the stranger as if nothing whatsoever had happened previously.

I gulp drily.

'No, wait, your brother? As in a Holmes?'

I take a double look at the full, bland looking man by my friend's side.

'Yes, John. My brother, Bob.'

'Bob?' I repeat, blank. What kind of name is that? _Sherlock's younger brother, Bob?_

That's the kind of name someone like me is supposed to bear, not a unique Holmes brother!

'Yes, Bob Holmes. Did you not hear clearly? Robert Hercroft Holmes, if you need the full name.'

I blink, then get a grip, plastering my best smile on. 'Bob, hi, I'm John, your brother's flatmate! Nice to meet you! Staying long?'

The goofy looking man, with the shaggy hair and quick smile hands over his hand for a shake at once. I'm linking him already.

I wonder if Mycroft is giving his other surveillance teams a day off now both brothers are present in the most secure location in London.

'Yes, you said already you were John!'

I realise I didn't quite make it clear and haste to explain:

'Yes, John Watson.'

Sherlock cuts in, in an abstracted knee-jerk reaction: '_Doctor_ Watson.'

'Yeah, it cost me several years of medic school to get that extra name, and forever more the trouble of pretending to be asleep through restaurant emergencies.'

'Really? Why?' the younger Holmes looks wide eyed at me.

'You know, when someone shouts out "is there a doctor in the house?" and your food grows cold before you come back? Never mind. It just... a joke. It actually happens a lot.'

'Sounds incredible!' the man assures me, innocent, and full of a forward honesty that you just can't fake.

I glance at Sherlock. He's rolling his eyes. Suddenly I realise that I'm intruding on the family reunion. Maybe I should excuse myself and...

'Is there any chow mein left?' I say instead, working my way to the fridge, pushing the butter dish with the severed fingers aside from the top shelf, to check the other containers.

'Great idea, let's order us all some food, John!' Bob pats me in the back. 'How about a couple of pints each? I've had a killer flight, I could use a kip in the sofa with a cold pint! Is that reality show with the two blonde twins still on?'

Sat at the table, Sherlock looks like he's suddenly grown ten years older watching us get along.

Bob, the guy next door, is one of the Holmes brothers, and perhaps the only Holmes I can ever hope to win at chess.

_**.**_


	43. Chapter 43

_**I.**_

It was Lestrade's fault.

I blame Lestrade. He distracted me. Therefore it was absolutely not my fault that I knocked the glass vial off the table, unknowingly, whilst shuffling things about, looking for a pen. 221B is no different from any other place, and you can't ever find a pen when you need one.

In all reasonability this is the sort of goofy accident that Sherlock and I are prone to have. In Baker Street our version of _Health and Safety_ could be easily adapted to _Corpses and Guns_, to suit us down to a T. _Sherlock and John_, the accident prone mavericks.

The glass vial shattered upon impact on the scratched and worn floorboards by the desk. Lestrade and I turned to look at the mess. Sherlock stopped mid rant and whiplashed his neck our way, then looking keenly down on the floor, before rushing over hands stretched out, followed by an abrupt halt and recoil. His usually pale face whiteness to almost unknown records as he looked at the mingled glass and colourless liquid, the daylight playing scintillating sparkled on the jagged edges.

Presently Sherlock sprang into action once more, grabbing me by the wrist and Lestrade by the collar of his shirt, and started manhandling us towards the flat door.

What happened next almost made me jump off my skin.

A wailing siren blasted through 221B. I fell on my knees at once, pressing desperate hands over my ears. Lestrade was dragged on a few more inches before the lights switched off – it was weird but the daylight still illuminated the room – and were replaced by whirling orange danger lights. Sherlock muttered a curse under his breath that much sounded like his brother's name accompanied by a vulgar word, as if he alone knew what all this was about, and what would follow.

As it turns out, 221B is more protected from threats than I ever expected. Solid metal bars descended from the top of the door frames, on those doors accessing the landing. What should gave been meant to keep bad guys out was malfunctioning, locking us in!

Sherlock dropped on his armchair, groaning and hiding his face in his hands. 'Biohazard breach. It's of no use, Lestrade!'

_**.**_

'Biohazard?'

I turn around to see Greg trying to force the heavy metal bars apart, but of course they don't budge.

The wailing has stopped, for which I'm deeply grateful, but the orange glow warning light still overpowers the familiar decor.

'Excuse me, Sherlock— what have I just done?' I ask pointedly_. Tell me the mess we're in._

The genius detective slowly extricates his long fingers from a haggard face. He looks me straight in the eye and tells me, owing me nothing but honesty: 'John, you've just unleashed a bioengineered virus on us all, exposing us to a 35% death rate disease.'

From the second door, Greg comments, keeping his wits together: 'They are not bad odds, considering.'

I frown, Sherlock verbalises: 'Ah, the wonders of statistics. In a room with three persons, statistically one of us dies from this virus.'

Greg tries his best to hide his shock from us. 'Don't be grumpy, sunshine! No one likes a bad horoscope or a death sentence!'

I'm pacing about in short bursts, uncontained and tense. 'Sherlock, you just happened to have a bioengineered virus laying about on the living room table?'

He simulate aloofness. 'It's also my work desk. You know that, John. Did you just happen to be so clumsy as to knock it to the floor?'

'That's because I didn't know we had a death sentence in a flimsy glass vial lying on the table!'

'Oh, please, John! Did you really think your illegal gun was the only lethal weapon in this room?'

'Is there anything else I should know about?' I snap at the mad genius.

'Not if you're going to act like that.'

'_Sherlock_.'

'Oh, use your imagination, from the fire poker to the curate darts in the glass case, you know our home is dangerous and you wouldn't want it any other way!'

I let a strangled sound cross my throat as I take a shell shocked seat on my armchair. Gathering my wits, I demand, just as Sherlock lays a baking bowl upside down over the broken vial, encasing the remnants of the liquid and the sharp shards in one go. Greg is punching keys on his phone, increasingly aggravated, but I can anticipate that Mycroft Holmes will have set the automatic disabling of any unauthorized phone calls.

_It's a lockdown, after all._

'Symptoms?' I demand to know, sharply.

Sherlock stills and glances up from his hunched stance on the floor. His eyes are deep and vulnerable and very human, even as he refuses to answer.

'I'll tell you all later. We won't show symptoms for the first two hours, and we'll need to use that time wisely to make this living room as comfortable as can be.'

I nod, unconsciously reverting to military training. I set my jaw and look across the kitchen.

'Still got access to the loo, small mercies.'

'Mycroft is a pompous git, he wouldn't bear it any other way.'

'You've got your bedroom, Sherlock.'

'We can take turns in it if necessary. It's a comfortable bed.'

'That it is. The kitchen, there's some food, should last us until—'

I'm abruptly interrupted by Greg Lestrade — 'Wait, John, _how_ _do_ _you_ _know_ Sherlock's bed is comfortable?'

I blink and we both turn towards Greg. 'Seriously?' I admonish, 'we're infected by a deadly disease and you're peddling rumours? Don't tell me that bets pool is still on at the Yard!'

Greg sniggers and I step forward angrily.

I'm held back by the gentlest of touches, reminding me of Sherlock and our predicament.

I point an angry finger at Greg. 'I'll deal with you later!' Then at Sherlock. 'I'll have you know I'm a great catch.'

My friend's thin worrying lips twitch into a blooming smirk. 'Yes, John, I am aware.' I could have sworn his concealed emotion is of fond warmth towards what he considers my antics.

'You could do a lot worse than me, you know?' I snap still.

He pretends to ponder, then assures me: 'I am aware I have no better romantic prospects than you, however the sudden love confession is unwarranted as none of us will die from this virulent strain. All we need to do is keep calm and bear through.'

Greg insists, tense: 'There's an antidote, right? Or an antibiotic? Right?'

I roll my medic's eyes. 'Not for a virus, Greg.'

Sherlock takes a quiet, theatrical seat in his chair and lectures us: 'It's an engineered strain. Flu-like symptoms, exacerbated by a few specific side effects, should all be found with and out of our systems in 24 hours – that's the good news.'

'Any bad news?' I ask him, demurely.

'Yes.' He hesitates, looks up at me, and ends up saying: 'There's only one doctor among us, John, and it's all on you.'

Mate, I've been a doctor in a war scenario. Did you really think I had a vast medical team with me at all times out there?

_**.**_

_**TBC **_

* * *

_A/N: Not the currently trending virus and the choice of topic comes from the constant immersion from the media. I had to rationalise it, I suppose. Don't worry, the boys will be fine. I think. I'm not a doctor. But this is a story and not real life. But I'm also not a writer. Well then. I've got a plan. But haven't written it out yet. Oh, we'll see. -csf_


	44. Chapter 44

_A/N: As this is my own virus, it follows that it should be named after me. Thank you, but I decline. -csf_

* * *

_**II.**_

'We could play cards. Or extend the cluedo board again – and, no, Sherlock, they can't all be in on it.'

'Clearly you forget that case in the coal pit, Lestrade.'

'It's a board game! The rules are written down by the manufacturer.'

I smirk, watching raptly Greg's common sense being derailed by my eccentric friend's antics.

Sherlock rolls his eyes in his customary manner. 'Boring! I should write the company a complaint. Maybe even redefine the game altogether for them. Clearly their development team is incapable of doing it themselves.'

'Do that, sunshine. Sit tight and write up a board game anew. You are looking a bit peaky to go about rearranging the furniture.'

The younger detective gestures impatiently, still dragging the overturned desk to the right-hand side window. Where the shutters never closed properly again after the "gas pipe leak" explosion across the street. At the time all the glass panes were shattered and Sherlock was very lucky being in that evening. It was some time around that Reichenbach falls case and we just found ourselves too busy to repair the shutters properly, up until we've noticed the problem again just now.

The left-hand side window is shut and the Damascus curtains are drawn, revealing a few places were moths had a meal out of them. The other window now has a desk top snuggly against the pane and the Damascus fabric drapes droopy on each side.

Sherlock finally explains, with his gaze stuck on the wooden surface of the table's underside: 'Extreme sensitivity to light. It will soon be upon us. As will fever, chills, muscle pains and in severe cases hallucinations. Nothing to worry about, just the bugs in question, and we shouldn't be worried. All is predicted and will go down according to plan. Which brings me back to photosensitivity. Maybe it would have started manifesting already if we weren't bathed in this eerie glow stick orange light. I guess even Mycroft has his uses on occasion.'

I look on over to the kitchen window we have covered with the stretched tarpaulin of a body bag. Turns out Sherlock has ordered himself a few online, for fun. He'd been drunk online shopping again, apparently, or so he has led me to believe, when pressed to provide justification.

The bathroom window is covered by a towel and Sherlock's bedroom window by lord knows what.

I look around the room to my friends' haggard faces and determine: 'Time for a check-up. Vitals, temperature and such. It's mandatory, so no whining, Sherlock!'

He assumes a falsely accused persona. 'Wouldn't think of denying my doctor', he defends himself, in that awkward _"I'll keep you guessing if there is subtext here" _way of his.

No wonder the Yard's pool is still very much alive.

Sherlock does this to aggravate me, you know?

So I make him sit on the sofa first, whilst I dump my extended first aid kit and my backside on the coffee table, ahead of the skinny detective.

'Go on', I pull up my stethoscope, 'take off your shirt for me.'

A blush spreads slightly over his cheeks.

I hope he's not getting a fever already.

_**.**_

'I need Donovan to cover my shift at work. There are details on ongoing investigations, and three suspects in custody to interrogate, not to mention reports to the prosecution lawyers and a gazillion of other things to do. I need – this phone – to work!'

Greg's blood pressure is steadily rising, as is demonstrated quite straightforwardly by the BP cuff. I exhale slowly and ask again:

'Think happy thoughts, Greg, so I can get an accurate reading.'

Nearby Sherlock takes the opportunity for a little payback: 'Won't you need to quarantine the inspector if his blood pressure is that high?'

Lestrade snaps: 'We already are quarantined, thanks to your meddling big brother! Or what do you reckon this is? Mandatory time out on the naughty corner?'

Sherlock turns to me, as if he had heard nothing. 'The lock on my bedroom door is quite sturdy. We can share the food and the drink, some reading material, and you said yourself the bed is comfortable.'

I glance darkly at my dark haired mate's humour. 'We're in this together, Sherlock. And so far we're doing fine, no pronounced symptoms yet. So tell me more about where you got this modern plague from, Sherlock.'

'Why should I?'

He acts aloof, _with an undertone of "tell me it's the right thing to do and I'll do it"_. I know my Sherlock.

'I may be able to help.'

'You're a GP, John. Even in your multitasking days in the war, virology was never your expertise.'

'Neither is yours, or you wouldn't be interested in studying new deadly viruses to improve your knowledge. You certainly would know better than to keep them in unlabelled vials on cluttered desks.'

He huffs, clearly displeased. 'It was unlabelled at the lab I infiltrated to retrieve it. Or do you think rogue government agents just label up their vials with "deadly disease inside, please refrain from stealing, always make sure to wash your hands after dealing with contaminated samples?" John, if you must know, at any given time there are evil forces out there trying to bring our civilised world to chaos. There was one man I was trying to prevent from succeeding in such endeavours.'

'Alright, I get that. You did what you did for a greater good. That's... good.'

'Thank you, John.'

'But why not bring all the vials and take away that evil scientist's means to harm the world?'

'I wasn't sure the vials weren't vitamins.'

'_Sherlock._'

'Fine. I didn't want to trigger him just yet, by exposing my hand. I'm not entirely sure this mutated strain of virus is the only weapon up his sleeve. If I provoked him openly and he retaliated with another—'

'Won't he find one vial missing? Wait, Sherlock, how many virus vials did you find in that lab?' I open my eyes wide. _Too many. _He sustains my shock with a grave demeanour. I gulp drily.

We both look away.

Greg clears his throat loudly, startling us. We almost forgot him. Somehow the friendly inspector insists on being a cheerful element to our trio.

'Well, sunshine, whatever tests you were planning on doing to that vial, you better start them now, because we are not going anywhere. We may as document all you can about it. John, you should keep notes on how this has affected us. Airborne transmission, isn't that what it's called? And how long to the first symptoms, and how severe.'

'And you?'

'I'll just make you both a cup of tea and watch you work, shall I?' our friend tells us, in an upbeat display.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	45. Chapter 45

_A/N: I hope I've stressed enough that our guys don't do proper health and safety, so don't go taking ideas from them. Except to create your own board game. Always make your own board games if you have friends who will join in._

_Also, again, they don't have *the novel virus*, and my sympathy goes out to those who do. I'm not trying in any way to trivialise what some people are going through. I may be next, in which case I'll take solace from the fact that in this story theirs is totally fictitious, half-sci-fi, and highly implausible._

_I'll give you guys the last installment tomorrow, as compensation for frequent delays. -csf_

* * *

_**III.**_

'Hey, the orange blasting light stopped', Greg verbalizes the obvious with a hopeful glance up to the ceiling. The multipurpose carbon monoxide alarm is now looking subdued and harmless once more.

'Mycroft', Sherlock growls in lieu of a proper explanation.

'Will he send medical help?' the inspector asks, full of brimming hope. _Oi! Am I here for decoration purposes only? _'No offense, John', he adds, sensing my mood.

I shake my head in silent disbelief. _What am I now, a plot device?_

Sherlock insists, pacing the rug in tight circles: 'Mycroft will send no one until they are all propped in hazmat suits and all the contingency plans have been thoroughly inspected and thrice checked. It's a deadly virus, remember?'

'Yeah, but you're his brother, mate, and _we_ _know_ big brother bends a few rules for you.'

Sherlock looks darkly at the inspector. 'Not when he perceives our predicament as fair punishment.'

'What do you mean?'

'Governmental facilities, Lestrade. Not a rogue foreign potency.'

'But you said—'

'Actually, no, I didn't. You inferred. Incorrectly, I may add. You have a tendency to do that.'

'Blimey! Remind me not to piss off Mycroft ever again!'

'You ask me the impossible', Sherlock answers pointedly.

I clear my throat, calmly.

'Have a seat.'

My quiet request is aimed at Sherlock, but only Greg seems to react to it, by turning his head.

Fatherly, our friend tries to second me: 'Your highness, John wants you to sit down.'

The detective mutters tersely: 'I'm fine! John is a worrier.'

'That wasn't a question. Have a seat, let John examine you before he gets a heart attack. We're all anxious about you.'

'That is illogical. Have I not made myself clear that I'm fine?'

'Sherlock', Greg tries to protest, finally approaching our distrusting friend.

I state, coolly: 'Fine, you don't trust me as a physician. Let Greg come near you and he can be a judge of the fast shallow breathing, the flushed cheeks and the dilated pupils. I can see them for miles, Sherlock.'

He snaps: 'I'm not ill!'

I cross my arms in front of me.

'You can't wish it away, you know?'

'I can't be, it's wrong!' Sherlock keeps walking in circles now.

'Who are you trying to convince?'

'I can't be ill because you two need me!' he shouts, temper lost, halting suddenly.

I blink. Then feel overwhelmed by sadness. _I'm the doctor here, I knocked the vial off the table, let me carry the burden of responsibility. The ugly, dark, nauseating weight of guilt and regret. You're Sherlock, you're too young, too great, too unblemished to be carrying such hateful shadow. Let me. I've seen hell and faced it with a smirk. If anyone needs to carry more ghosts and regrets, give me those, for I'm the veteran here. I carry them with me wherever I go. You should be free, Sherlock, you were only trying to do good._

Sherlock ponders me with deep green eyes, full of loss and hurt and admiration. His face softens, as he deduces out loud for my benefit, because he knows it grounds me to hear him _be Sherlock. _'You keep telling me to eat right, sleep right. You knew one day some illness would catch up with me.'

I shake my head. _No, please no._ I can only try to plead. To Sherlock, to some unbeknown divine entity more willing to listen to me than the usual ones. 'But I'm older, got more than my fair share of near-death experiences.'

He actually smiles, a sad smile, but pleasured that I'm not winning this competition. 'You are full of good sense, John. It serves you well.'

'But—'

He suddenly snaps to a different, colder expression of himself. 'You're hardly a nurse, but I trust you can draw some of my blood for analysis?'

'How can we get it a lab? We are in a lockdown.'

He looks down on me, condescendingly. 'I can do a better and quicker job of it. John, you must monitor my progression but keep enough distance so to not get infected by—'

He stops abruptly, gulps and looks absolutely dumbstruck. His carefully crafted controlled façade crumbling to dust. _I'm even the tiniest bit proud._

_Only John Watson can undo in an instant the indomitable force that is Sherlock Holmes._

You see I've just swiped a finger off his sweaty forehead – low fever setting in, not worrying yet – and licked it.

'There, if a full glass vial shattering wasn't enough, now whatever you got I'm sure to catch it.' I squint. 'Or do you need me to have a second go just to be sure?'

He draws back from my wet finger. I have a four year old's urge to chase my friend around the house.

Looking on over at the inspector, he raises his open hands defensively; _please, don't lick me._

Oh, dear.

I focus back on Sherlock. I may have stepped too far into Sherlock's personal space bubble by intruding into the privacy of his germs, I realise, as I see him look a bit consternated and a lot confused. He looks derailed from his tracks, and not returning to his normal functioning soon.

'John— I was trying to keep you safe', my friend finally utters.

'Same here.' _I also know one little thing even Sherlock doesn't know about himself; he works better under the pressure to save the lives of his friends._

Greg surmises, shifting uncomfortably in his chair: 'That was plain weird, sorry. You've weirded me out, John.'

I shrug. I had a sibling, growing up. That was nothing, trust me.

_**.**_

Sherlock Holmes swipes at the table's contents with a throw of an arm, toppling books, labware and nearly the beloved microscope out if the kitchen table.

'Any luck?' I ask, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.

'Nothing, John! Nothing I can detect with what I've got here!'

His voice is tense, his forehead is bathed in sweat and precocious wrinkles, and I've a felling he's only answering me out of kindness. The wounded scientist wants nothing more than to hide and brood until he can come up with a better scientific hypothesis.

I sigh and refocus on the inspector. His heart rate is a bit high and he looks a bit haggard, as the virus sets in. The progression is stunningly quick and I shudder to think how long we've got until we are all rendered useless.

_**.**_

The first couple of hours pass and I'm concerned for my two best mates. Sherlock is looking a bit peaky and I'm constantly monitoring him for fever spikes or difficulties breathing. Greg is much the opposite to the languishing genius taking up all of the long sofa in a dejected posture (it may, or may not, be related with the inspector having removed his additions to cluedo, the board game, branding them ludicrous). No, Greg is up and about, exhausting himself, full of a nervous jittery energy that is getting to my nerves already. I wish he'd seat down and conserve his energy to fight the inevitable disease.

'Secret passages? Why would I have secret passages?' Sherlock answers, indignant to the inspector's freedom of information request.

'Come on, because you're Sherlock Holmes and this is 221B Baker Street!' Greg won't accept the denial. 'It's_ "expect the unexpected" _with you, Sherlock, that's why!' Greg assures, convinced. 'Tell us already!'

The inspector's got a point. I look on over to Sherlock.

The languishing genius rolls his eyes, and admonishes us with a look full of reproach, for making him out to be this heroic figure, this magician creature to save the day, and then sighs, giving in.

'There's a locked closet upstairs, after John's room. It contains a door leading to Mrs Turner's next door.'

'Wait!' I interject. 'You told me that was a closet where you kept your summer clothes stored.'

Sherlock stops, baffled. 'Yes. Did you really think that little space would have been a big enough wardrobe without the passageway into next house? Honestly, John, do I really need to spell out the obvious every time?'

Greg catches on quick. 'Where do you keep stored your winter wear, then? The basement?'

'Of course not, I creating my personal museum there. I've rented out a flat across the street for winter wear. I've got several copies of my long coat, since it got discontinued, it was the only sensible thing to do.'

'How about buying a different coat?'

'Why should I? I like mine.'

Greg Lestrade has this uncanny ability to make the skinny detective fess up to things even I was unaware of. I'm just not entirely convinced he wouldn't lie to Greg, in order to further mystify his image.

I bring the revelations back to the point where Sherlock mentioned a museum.

'You're putting together some educational exhibition on the science of deduction, you said?'

He smirks. 'Come on, John, you always knew the website wasn't big enough for me. It's my life mission and my personal gift to the Yard. Literally, the latter, as I'm autographing tickets to your people, inspector. They need the educational value.'

'Sherlock, wow, that's—'

'Thorough?'

'Ugh...'

'Pivotal?'

'Ugh...'

'Generous and abnegated?'

'How about "self-centred"?'

His grey eyes narrow.

'Unlike you, John, I have never erroneously claimed not to be such. You must admire the integrity and honesty of my careful choice.'

'Don't be a git, _I know you_.' And I raise a defying eyebrow.

He shrugs and looks away, pointedly. 'Anyway, John, I'd must favour a doctor Watson museum, if you'd be so kind to indulge me with the plans for one.'

'What? I'm boring! What would I have to put out there?' I protest.

Sherlock looks keenly towards me. Tantalising, he assures me: 'If you ever change your mind, you'll find I'm a great help. In fact, I have most of it laid out already.'

'What? When did you find the time to think about my life?' My voice keeps pitching higher.

'You work too much. With the sickly people, I mean. Worry not, there's a room dedicated to your medical career.'

I glance at Greg. I've got many questions, but I'll leave them until such time we've got full privacy.

Sherlock might still be pulling my finger.

A big part of me hopes he is.

_**.**_

Escape is nigh. Our gang of three storms the upper corridor's closet under the detective's quick directives.

Greg and I insist on ignoring the nest rows of identical slim line suits in identical hangers that pend from a chromed rail in a nice mahogany inbuilt wardrobe. Sherlock violently yanks aside the rows of navy, dark grey and black – and is that a posh tweed outdoors suit, flanked by a police officer's uniform and some NHS scrubs at the very end? – in order to expose the false back. Looks solid and sturdy to me, made of the same material as the wardrobe throughout.

'Are you sure—' I start, only to stop as I see my friend reaching for a concealed brass ring, partly inlaid in the woodwork. Sherlock swirls an elegant violinist index finger in the ring and inserts the tip just enough to get a precarious grip. Always the showman, Sherlock stills, glances at each member of his meagre audience, gaging our rapture at his furtive moves. The occasion calls for an elusive manoeuvre and we subconsciously fall into a quiet obeisance, I notice. Sherlock refocuses his deep green grey eyes on the minute handle and slides it in one swift move.

It exposes the brownish dirty back of a big piece of wall plaster. The path is blocked. Some redecorating has been going on Mrs Turner's side. _The married ones._ I sigh. Sherlock would never remember long, but one of them is an interior designer – although I can't say many great things about his flamboyant style.

It's a running theory that that's how Mrs Hudson ended up with such non-matching furniture and wallpapers. Mrs Turner supplies her with the unwanted and spares from the boys next door.

Much like me, Sherlock's baggage on arrival was complicated, and did not include a set of matching dining table and chairs.

I sigh, and a wave of cold runs down my spine, causing me to waver and lean my body against the closet's sturdy side wall.

'Don't crease my suits', the humiliated detective snaps at me. I ignore it easily, knowing it's just immature behaviour. It's Greg who immediately descends upon me, a strong hand squeezing my shoulder, as he checks:

'Still with us, John?'

I frown. Do I look that bad? I focus what I hope are my best innocent blue eyes on the inspector and say out loud to the detective by his side:

'I'm alright. There's nothing wrong with me yet.'

_And I mean to keep it that way._

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	46. Chapter 46

_A/N: Last but not least. -csf_

* * *

_**IV.**_

Sherlock succumbs first. He's a pale shivering form rolled in a blanket on the sofa. Dark fevered eyes that look so black on the livid face, and dishevelled, drooping curls framing a quiet expression of despondency. My heart clenches when I notice how he grips tightly the edge of his blanket, like an infant's instinctive quest for comfort. I fight back my own urge to go wipe his damp forehead, and smooth the wrinkles on his forehead, murmuring words of comfort and sympathy. Untouched and unapproached, Sherlock closes his eyes and pretends to doze off, but I know he's listening attentively to every sound we make as I check Greg over.

I need to doctor first, my medical knowledge may be the best I can give my two friends yet.

The inspector is a burly, cockney figure refusing to give in to our shared fate. He's a sweaty, tensed muscles statue, squinting at me with the same aversion to light that affects us all, but he too starts looking much like Sherlock; vulnerable and pained.

I don't suppose I'm health magazine cover material either, but I focus on my job and try to push back the queasiness, soldiering on.

'Hold your breath for me, for as long as you—'

I don't need to finish my request. Over eager, Greg took in a deep rattling breath, only to have sputtered it out in a raucous coughing scene.

Still none of the two has much of a high fever, although our core body temperature is undoubtedly higher than normal. I put away my stethoscope and get up from my chair, allowing Greg to get his shirt back on.

'Sherlock, if we get Mycroft's attention... He wouldn't abandon us, right?' the inspector asks with whatever breath he can muster together soon after.

The sofa's consulting blanketed lump answers from the depths of his poly-wool blend: 'We've been playing Dead-Man-Blink since we were six, on and off. We still haven't called a winner on our little duel.'

'Dead-Man-what?'

'I won't ever blink first, Lestrade.'

'We're possibly fighting for our lives here. Couldn't you call me by my given name?'

'Sure, Lestrade.'

'You know Lestrade is not my given— Oh, never mind.'

I return to the living room carrying a stable tray of tea mugs, not trusting my left hand all that much. The old tremor has returned, fuelled by inactivity and frustration.

'Tea anyone? We must keep hydrated.'

Greg nods, negligently. I'm handing him a cuppa when a small strangled whimper emerges from the cocoon on the sofa.

Shoving the mug into Greg's hands I rush to my poor friend's side, kneeling by the sofa. I lay a gentle hand on his forehead, but even as I approach I can feel the heat emanating from the too warm body.

'Sherlock, I have to ease off these blankets, you're starting to burn up.'

A vicious grip on my wrist stops all movement, and in all certainty my very blood circulation.

'Sherlock, it's me, John', I advise quietly. Must be a nightmare. 'Greg', I ask, over the shoulder, 'get me a cold flannel from the bathroom.'

I hear the old inspector grunt as he extends his muscles, following my request. Strained, uneven footsteps follow him out of the room.

'Sherlock, it's just a bad dream. I'm here, I got you.'

Foreign, almost unintelligible, words are muttered from the depths of his scratchy throat.

'It's alright, it's me, John', I insist.

A second strong hand flies to my throat, gripping me with deadly strength. I can feel my bones creak. It's so easy to break a neck if you only know _where_ to exert the pressure.

Sherlock knows _where_.

That he found the sweet spot so quick tells me more about those missing years Sherlock spent chasing down Moriarty's web of crime, than he has ever formed in conscious, measured words.

'Sherl—' I painfully gasp.

He's beyond comprehension, lost in the throes of an abusive night terror.

My hand drapes over his tense, clawed grip, but I know better than to panic and try to extract his hand. Instead I lower my thumb over the back of his hand and ease gentle, appeasing circles on the smooth skin.

'Pleez, Sherl—' _Please stand down. I'm here. Wouldn't ever let anyone hurt you while I'm in the room, right?_

There's a flutter of eyelids and an indignant huff of breath, before that dead grip eases, his hand drops, receding back into the blanket covers. All the while the other hand softens its grip but remains united to my wrist, grounded, pacified now. He's found an anchor to his safety.

I would never take it away, his now gentle touch a source of comfort to me.

Greg arrives back with a cold flannel, disparaging over the effort spent. I won't dignify him with an answer nor a recount of events passed.

I lay that flannel on my friend's heated forehead and hear him murmur incoherent words in that same foreign language.

_It's alright, Sherlock, the past can't hurt you anymore._

_**.**_

It's been over four hours since Greg distracted me, causing me to—

_Never mind. I did it. I broke the damned vial. Mycroft's secret plague. Now the older Holmes is less than inclined to be forgiving and get us some antidote, medical facilities and treatment, or just a nice bed to repose in._

Greg took Sherlock's king sized bed a while ago. He was of no help anyway.

They are both sound asleep, weakened by the disease that spreads through their bodies, stealing their vitality and wits.

I put down my mug. Not even tea tastes right at this point. I too feel queasy and without me the others won't have anyone to keep careful watch.

Even if I'm useless. I know first hand what's going on with my friends, but not even the best diagnose can fix the mess I created.

_Unless I do it._

I raise tired eyes that drag down with the dust of ages, ogling the top shelves, where I suspect Mycroft has concealed a spy camera among Sherlock's encyclopaedia. Somewhere along the letter M we presume. As the elder Holmes never shown much pleasure from the voyeuristic exercise, Sherlock and I slowly accepted the domestic intrusion over time. Slowly, I say, we stopped putting on elaborate plays to deceive the indiscreet eye beyond the lens.

It's time for a comeback.

I get up, unstable but proud, and face the camera in a military salute. _Come on, higher commander of the known universe, come play._ I blink, dizzy, and have to set my jaw to keep my focus. I've got a message to convey and it needs the direct attention of the great one, not one of his many underlings. I pointedly look at the table, then the spot where the broken glass from the vial still stands. I look on to Sherlock's indistinct shape in the background, then further to the bedroom at the end of the corridor. Finally I look back onto the high shelves, and raise my mug until it stands in front of that particular tome of encyclopaedic knowledge, blinding it; for I know nothing enraptures better the attention of a Holmes than a mystery, and nothing aggravates Mycroft more than not knowing what's happening.

Mission accomplished, a move back in tired moves to my armchair, a smirk playing at my lips as I close my eyes, trying to gather my failing strengths.

_**.**_

I jump at the piercing ringtone on my phone; _God Save The Queen. _It's Mycroft, then.

Wait, my phone works for Mycroft now?

'Mycroft?'

'I salute you back, John. Now will you be so kind as to inform be what your strange pantomime was all for?' the older Holmes drawls through the stable phone connection.

'Mycroft', I start quickly, afraid to lose the thread to the outside world. 'Sherlock found these vials and one of them broke and now we all have a deadly virus and they are succumbing to it, we all are. Send medics, two ambulances in the least and get a quarantine zone ready for our arrival.'

Mycroft huffs. 'Don't be trying, John. You are perfectly healthy.'

'What do you mean? You think the virus is out of our systems now?'

'The virus is nothing but a reverse placebo, John. You are not ill.'

'That's impossible! We have the symptoms!' Why is he saying this?

'John, you're a doctor. You must know first hand the power of the mind over the body. You believed you were badly diseased... and you started displaying symptoms. May I guess, a fever but not too high and muscular pain in tense limbs?'

'But— _Really_?'

I've got to hand it to the Holmes intelligence, as Mycroft diagnoses me through the phone and perhaps a blurry spy camera picture. I glance upwards to the encyclopedia in general distrust.

'John, perhaps you should have called me earlier', he starts, aggravatingly pondered. I can swear he's giggling like mad behind that stony faced exterior.

'We couldn't get in touch! Greg was desperate to get a phone call through to his team! You must have hacked the telecommunications system!'

'I assure you I did no such thing. _This _time.' Mycroft actually sounds amused, breaking his stoic façade. 'You have, of course, tried both your phone and my brother's before assuming they did not connect to a network just as the inspector's?'

'No...' I answer, sheepishly. _We spun a narrative where everything seemed to fit so well._ 'So we're not, you know, not actually going to die of this?' I can feel myself blush.

This is ruddy awkward.

'I assure you, John, not of this.'

Mycroft Holmes makes for a reliable Oracle and I feel some tension leaving my neck.

'So you wouldn't actually do this to Sherlock? Abandon him to his luck out of spite?'

Mycroft chuckles, on the other side of the line. 'Perhaps I will in the future', he promises lightly. 'John, I assure you I was most annoyed with my baby brother when I heard of the near impossible theft. It had Sherlock's marks all over it. Quite literally, I'm afraid. He had come earlier to my office at the Diogenes and handled my favourite paperweight, unknowingly to him it was covered in ultraviolet ink. So immediately I confirmed Sherlock had taken the missing vials from my top secret labs and when my top secret assistants told me the thief had erroneously taken the unlabelled vials with the placebo, well I didn't see a need to worry further. Nor a rush to alert the unhappy thief. I foresaw a long night of fruitless microbiology, nothing more.'

Knowing Sherlock, yes, the fruitless exercise would have made severe punishment before the stubborn genius was ready to admit defeat.

'So in the vial, it was just... water?'

'Yes, I'm afraid so, John. You have all been in a nervous excitable state, subject to suggestion.'

'But, why keep a placebo among the real McCoy?'

'It's a much needed precaution when the lab test subjects are part of the investigative team, John. We needed to keep the numbers of people in the know to the absolute minimum.'

'So... all this, it was all in our heads?'

'Again I'm afraid so, John.'

I blink. Relief never felt so little saving grace as now. I feel a dry chuckle stuck on my throat, so I force out a little cowardly cough.

'I didn't do so badly, I'll have you know.'

'Is it important to you that I know, John?' The smugness in that well known voice is so familiar to Sherlock's.

'Yes. I'll have you know. You met my therapist, damn it.'

I can practically hear his trademark smirk.

'John, you are practiced at the art of rising above yourself in order to give to others. You have focused a lot of your energy on the other two unfortunate victims, I'm sure. You were thus perhaps not fully aware of the tricks your mind was playing on you, like theirs were.'

The world is upside down; Mycroft is trying to be nice.

'Right. So, just to be sure, after the stupid orange alarm light went off we have been free go come and go from Baker Street.'

'Absolutely. The alarm got triggered automatically, I'll be sure to check the sensitivity of the fume exhaust filters so in the future they don't go off on something so insignificant.'

'Wait! You cancelled the alarm. You had to override it, Mycroft! You knew we were panicking here and you let us—'

The call is abruptly disconnected at that point.

Neither Holmes plays by the rules long.

Well, I won that round. I'll have him know.

I sigh and look around in the utter devastation of Baker Street's usual calming effect. There are tea mugs all about, broken glass on the floor, cushions everywhere, not to mention the scattered contents of my extended first aid kit. I sigh again and just decide to sit back down on my armchair and close my tired eyes for a while.

_How can I be so tired after an illness I didn't even have?_

_**.**_

'John!'

I come to with a start. Sherlock is kneeling by my armchair, keen piercing eyes still a bit wild, but much clearer than before, targeting me.

Someone moves behind him. It's Mycroft, who says: 'I shall check on the inspector. But know this, Sherlock, if I go into your room and find something that shouldn't be there—' he leaves the veiled threat hanging in the air.

'Oh, please, don't you think I've learned to conceal my tracks from you yet?' Sherlock huffs, insisting on stinging his brother with the weight of doubt.

I try to look around me, confused. Who's the hero, who brought the antidote? No, wait. No virus, there never was one.

'John', Sherlock calls back my attention, still monitoring me. 'I miscalculated.'

'Not your fault', I say, roughly. 'I broke the vial.'

'I was wrong.' He gulps drily, as if trying to wash down with saliva the bad taste those unused words left in his mouth.

'Yeah, well, we all knew your kleptomania would get us into trouble some day.'

'John, no. I was wrong because I was wrong.'

'What? You? But you're Sherlock Holmes, you're never wrong!'

'Enough rubbing it in, John', he grunts, tetchily. 'It was merely a decoy. A placebo placed in my path by my odious brother's team, while the real deal remains firmly locked away.'

I nod. I know.

'But it exists. Sherlock, what if someone else finds it and releases it?'

'They won't.'

'How do you know that for sure?'

'I didn't get it. All I found was a dummy. They'll never come near it!'

I smile at his natural arrogance. Then I shake my head, fighting to grasp the concept. 'Still can't believe we all fell ill. You were experiencing hallucinations due to your fever and all!'

Sherlock raises a tentative hand closer to my face, but recoiles as if ashamed. I realise there must be bruises around my windpipe, the type that perfectly matched the beautiful long slender fingers of my friend.

'It's alright', I let him know. That seems to release my friend's repressed histrionics. He gets up, paces and gestures wildly.

'It's not alright, John! Can't you understand? It was all a collective hysteria, a suggestion that had the power to subdue us to our barest, humbler selves!'

I shrug. I'm just happy it's over. It's enough for now. _It will do._

'As much as you don't like to admit it, we're only human, Sherlock.'

He growls under his breath as if he had just been insulted.

Greg Lestrade is coming out of the bedroom, looking tired and dishevelled. He too looks a bit blank, a bit confused by the train of events.

Tacitly, Sherlock and I avoid the conversation we both know we must yet have. Sherlock is carrying demons, the kind that assault us deep in the darkest nights, and we must set them free.

_Some good may yet come out of this._

'I guess I can go home now, sunshine', Greg comments, eyeing the flat's door. Yet he makes no hurried move to reach it. He looks back on us, something clearly on his mind. 'If I had to go through this, you know, I'm sort of glad it was with you two nutters. I mean, imagine being stuck in this nightmare with Donovan?' He smirks but finally grabs his trench coat. 'I think I'm going to return my ex-wife's call. See if she's still up for that dinner. I mean, something like this puts life in perspective, right?'

I nod, Sherlock holds the door God the detective inspector. 'She's really not the one for you, Greg.' And he bangs the door.

I smile; proof Sherlock knows Greg's name, and he cares.

Might not be the tight time for big life decisions, and I quietly lean back against my armchair, lazily trailing my sight over the drawn curtain's bald patches.

'John?'

'Yes, Sherlock?' I ask, without turning.

A nice fragrant tea mug comes my way.

'Are you up for a long talk? I think it's time...'

'Always, mate. I'm always here for you. '

_**.**_


	47. Chapter 47

_A/N: Well, under complicated circumstances I thumbed a Sherlock Holmes book for teenagers where the premise plot was a classic: Mycroft is found on an alley, kneeling by a bloody corpse, holding the murder weapon; Mycroft gets wrongly accused of murder; Sherlock needs to prove his innocence and reveal the culprit. (I don't know if John is a part of the book.) I couldn't get the book – long story – or find it since, so I guess now I have to write the story myself. Bah. -csf_

* * *

_**.1.**_

Two glasses filled with clear liquids rest on 221B's kitchen table. Inside there are a gummy bear each. The consulting detective and part time scientist is eyeing both drowned bears most attentively.

'What are you doing?'

'Science experiment.'

'I can see that much.'

'And yet you ask, John.'

I shake my head in mock exasperation. 'You know it doesn't take a genius to explain, if you actually know what it is you're doing.'

Sherlock's lips quirk upwards despite his attempts at neutrality. 'Why would I experiment if not to advance science?'

'Don't give me that, loads of scientific discoveries were achieved by accident or random occurrences. And that' – I open my laptop decisively, powering it on, and fall on the Union Jack pillow on my armchair – 'is precisely what you are aiming at, Sherlock.'

'That is absolutely preposterous, I would never—'

'_Sherlock.'_

My interruption refocuses the detective at once, as if he recognised the undertones clipped in his given name. Silent and fluidly he's at once approaching my armchair, peering over my shoulder. Then he springs to action, thumbing his phone, grabbing his long coat. 'Lestrade!' he calls on the line. He never turns back. He doesn't need to. He knows I'm right on his heels.

_**.**_

'He was found inebriated, sir. Almost passed out twice and threw up on constable Jones there, he did. He was drunk, alright. Talked gibberish and couldn't walk in a straight line... Holmes, you say his name is? Oh, yeah, here it is, detention cell 13. I'll show you... Well, less gibberish than I thought. I didn't quite believe anyone would actually be called Minecraft Holmes.'

'Mycroft', Sherlock hisses the correction to the friendly police officer. Despite the Holmes brothers legendary rivalry they'll defend each other in public, as if they themselves be the only ones privileged enough to insult each other in equal terms.

'_My_-_Croft_, you say? Might have been, he was drawling a bit. Must have been the alcohol in his system.'

'My brother's not an alcoholic.'

'That's what they all say, innit?' the officer responds wisely, as he pulls open the heavy doors to the detention cells. A white, sterile clean straight corridor franking several doors left and right.

I purse my lips thin. Oh, what ignominy it must have been to Mycroft. He must still be feeling the pain of it, deep down in the expensive seams of his tailored three piece suit.

Sherlock walks in first, I follow second and the officer pulls the door closed behind us. Sherlock is impatient, I can tell, as we wait to be led to the correct cell, yet he stands tall, firm and proud. Perhaps as if he could muster in himself enough dignity to share with his brother.

Soon we're on the move again.

'_Sherlock, your services are not required'_, the lonely well spoken voice filters through the base murmur of conversation, in the well known projection of Mycroft Holmes.

He must have recognised the sound of his brother's footsteps.

Sherlock glances at me to share an amused eye roll.

'Mycroft, I wouldn't miss this for the world!' the younger brother pretends to gloat already. The rivalry pantomime is to be kept at all times, particularly within witnesses earshot.

Sometimes even when no one else is in the room, just because they've grown so accustomed to it, it's now code for their brotherly interactions.

'Come if you must', says the long suffering Mycroft's voice.

'I brought my blogger, someone should witness your crude downfall, brother dear', Sherlock further alerts him to my presence.

'I foresaw that much. A great man casts a long shadow... a mediocre man drags one along.'

Sherlock stops short in front of the detention cell, eyes the man inside and sniggers. 'Seen enough. I'll return once I solved the murder. Sit tight.' Short, business-like, no empathy, all Holmesian trademarks. And to me, he directs, 'John, doctor him. I'll be outside. I'll keep the cab waiting.'

With that Sherlock turns away, abandoning his brother with calculated coldness, leaving me stunned behind.

I glance inside the holding cell, to a bedraggled version of the older Holmes I'm familiar with. It's a pitiful sight, but I keep myself from showing that. 'Hello there, Mycroft. Fancy seeing you here!'

'Oh, spare us, doctor Watson. I've had a long morning and I'm about to be accused of murdering a stranger in a back alley where I do not recall going, nor can I make sense of why should I find myself there, among those near inhumane people with their filthy nomadic possessions.'

'You mean homeless people? Classy, Mycroft! You know it could easily be you or me one day, none of us is that safe from a bad turn of fortune.'

The haggard man faces me with the same cold dead eyes he always has. 'I'd say you have come closer than I ever would, but that would be _guessing_.' He stresses the lie in that last word and I shudder to think how much he knows of this veteran thrown into London without family support, running out of his compensation and not enough pension on his pocket before I met his brother.

Mycroft's attack is his way of making me back off. Redirecting me. It's how a Holmes communicates.

'How are you?' I ask instead. Sherlock should have asked this. Maybe I can carry the answer to the younger brother.

Mycroft squints, disdainfully.

'You want me to do your doctoring for you too? What next, find the actual killer from within this cell?'

'No, you idiot', I snap, and it's not nice, as Mycroft is locked up in a holding cell, and his shoelaces have been taken away from him. 'I'm asking how you are.'

'It's a useless question. There's a case for my brother to solve, if he's not too busy. Hurry along, or he'll leave without you, doctor Watson.'

I let go of my previous anger momentarily .

'It's not a useless question at all. It's the most important question there is, Mycroft.'

He blinks. Confused, perhaps. I feel a bit saddened that a genius will not be aware of the importance of reaching out.

Yet he answers me this time. Controlled, sarcastic and miffed beyond belief.

'How am I? I'm stuck in a dirty holding cell riddled with misspelled profanities scrawled on the walls, ready to be accused of murder by a representative of the law who watches every episode of Inspector Morse on television, religiously. I think what you are trying to make me say, John, is that I'm royally screwed.'

I smirk.

'Don't worry, you've got us. Sherlock will solve your case.'

Mycroft leans back on the hard wood bench and cold wall. 'Ah, I feel better already', he mocks.

Only he jests with the truth.

_**.**_

'Sherlock?' I look around at the quiet parking lot. Can't believe Sherlock just left without me already. Although in all honesty, he keeps doing that. Why it still surprises me, I don't know.

'John!'

I'm called out from near the gates and sure enough there's the familiar figure in a long wool coat, impatiently waiting for me. I sprint my way over, as he's already entering a waiting cab.

'St Bart's teaching hospital', he directs the cabbie as soon as I enter as well. The engine starts and we're soon on the road.

Sherlock is yet to acknowledge that I'm eyeing him attentively. After all, his brother has just been set up for murder and is about to be unjustly accused. If ever there was a vital case for Sherlock Holmes, this has got to be it.

The detective finally dispenses a glance my way, before looking out of the window into the drizzle rain falling outside.

In my hand he has just planted an evidence bag. It holds a badge. _Sherlock, we talked about this!_ I'm about to snap when I realise there's not enough buff in the silver chromed surface.

Mycroft threw up on constable Jones. This is Jones's badge, and that is enough biological sample to run our own tests.

With the same answers as the blood tests will give the police.

Only Sherlock can run them faster.

Or Molly can. In the morgue. Sherlock's home away from home.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	48. Chapter 48

_A/N: Take care and stay safe. -csf_

* * *

_**.2.**_

'Come, John, you are lagging behind!'

I roll my eyes. What's next? A quick whistle? A snap on the dog leach? Sherlock's impatience is understandable, given the strained family circumstances, but he still needs to tone this down. Both Holmes do.

Sherlock turns an abrupt corner. I hesitate, elongating that elastic distance between us.

'The crime scene is this way, Sherlock! We should be going _this way_!'

'Stop blabbing about what we're doing and come here this instant!'

The detective is not above pointing at the ground by his feet, as he stares me down.

_He's mental!_

I roll my eyes and stamp my feet, but follow his _orders_ all the same.

'The alley is in the next left, not this left, Sherlock.'

'Come. We're approaching a different way.'

'What way?'

His green eyes flicker to the rooftops over the long row of similar brick houses, than back to me. I nod, for I know he's asking me if I'll partake in this risky activity in the heights of roofs and chimneys. Asking me if I'll join him.

Seeing me nod, his lips fight to bite down a proud joyful smile. 'This way', he says again, but this time his words are quiet and infused with gratitude.

_**.**_

'The murderer was a tall person of possible Russian descent and irritable temperament, John.'

I take my friend's outstretched hand and allow him to pull me up to the roof's ledge. Speaking of tall people, Sherlock at times holds the advantage in our acrobatics due to his long limbs alone.

That we're having this pertinent conversation whilst scaling an urban building is not unusual in the slightest for us.

'Alright, I get _tall_. You estimated the height of the killer by the knife wound angle and positioning on the body. Lestrade texted you pics of the preliminary reports and you spoke to Molly Hooper.'

Sherlock huffs as he reaches the pinnacle of the roof, holding on to the slippery, mossy slate slabs.

'Most likely a man, by the choice of murder weapon. Yet we cannot discard a murderer profiteering from a rising occasion.'

'Very un-Mycroft-ish, anyway.'

'Alas, that will not count as evidence in my brother's favour', Sherlock states. 'Irritable, because it wasn't a fully premeditated murder. Certainly there are better crimes that can be committed without the murderer getting caught easily. As a matter of brain exercise, I often fantasise how I could get away with murdering Mycroft. Or you, John.'

'Ta. Is it painless?'

'Most times.' He shrugs.

'Ta, but all that love and care will snag those mental cogs of yours one day, and ruin that beautiful machinery of reason you carry about.'

I see him blink, derailed in his conversation.

'Does my fantasizing your demise bother you, John?' Sherlock seems to ponder for the first time ever.

'Not as much as it probably should', I answer in full honesty. He's still a bit bothered, looking at me attentively while I go past him.

'If it helps, I also fantasise on how you could be saved from most demises. Having a plan is the best way to prepare for challenges, they say.'

'Indeed... Sherlock—'

'You need help over the chimney?' he asks, genuinely solicitous.

'No, I'm alright, ta. Sherlock, what if Mycroft was framed? That would explain the easy murder. It's hardly easy to defend the man found with the murder weapon, by the victim's side, who has no explanation for being there at all.'

Sherlock is hardly amused by a cut dry framing murder, hardly befitting of his brother.

'Preposterous! Waste such an opportunity to frame Mycroft for a skilfully defying case?'

'Well, that's rather the point. You'd choose a open-and-shut case if you wanted to be sure to get Mycroft for it.'

'Well, maybe _you_ would, John', I hear him grumble.

I remind myself this is how Jim Moriarty and the best bad guys got close to Sherlock Holmes; by exploiting his need for cases to be tricky, intricate, transcending the normal standards. Complicated, over-the-top, near flamboyant extraordinary features nearly always attract Sherlock like a moth to light.

Sherlock is too ready to overlook all banal things.

Or even the deadliness of a soldier like me.

Hey, I could have done Mycroft in, and not left a trace! Efficient, clean, to the point. Soldiers can do that better than most. No wasting time leaving clues or flamboyant signatures when fighting for our lives in the battlefield. So we know I'm not the culprit, right there. I wouldn't take time to kill a secondary victim to set up a frame. And...

...wait, have I just elaborated mentally on how I'd get rid of Mycroft Holmes?

I groan to myself. Damn it, I'm no better than Sherlock, am I?

'John?' my friend calls out, impatient.

'Coming!' I reply at once, jumping a metal railing between balconies, three storeys high.

We are now nearing the edge of a sloped roof right above the crime scene alley. We can survey it from above, incognito. There's a police officer left guarding the scene by the blue and white delimitation tape. He looks bored, as he scratches his bum and plays a game on his phone. At a distance, a few people come and go in the main street, some risking a quick peak the alleyway, morbid curiosity slowing down their footsteps on their way to work.

'Hey, hang on, I'm not Spiderman!'

Sherlock stills his descent by a drain pipe, looking confused. 'Who's that?'

Right. Cultural references don't work on my friend who is already starting to scale down the building wall to the alley below.

I huff and follow at his six.

_**.**_

'We'll get caught!' I hiss, angrily. Not without cause. We're exploring the murder alley right behind the officer's back. If he turns...

Sherlock shushes me quiet.

Hands poised over the dirty pavement, slowly drifting over the irregular surface, looking for the relevant clues among the abundance of debris and dirt. Expensive trousers getting ruined by the oily secretions of a nearby rubbish skip, Sherlock is not above kneeling and observing every squared inch of the alley.

Gosh, he's got a magnifying glass in his hand now!

Some passers-by giggle on the main street as they catch a glimpse of Sherlock's pose. The detective himself yelps happily as he finds something on the ground. The police officer is turning around in confusion to face us – that's it, we're joining Mycroft in his tiny holding cell! – and Sherlock uses his brilliant lateral thinking to save us from our fate.

'Oi! Gerrout of here!'

I'm blushing as Sherlock raises himself to his knees right in front of me and turns with his most innocent and bland look. Too innocent for two blokes infiltrating the privacy of a crime scene. _Don't know about the prince of darkness Sherlock, but romantic impulses would never lead me to a crime scene. Still, it takes all kinds. _The police officer is fuming and curses us again.

'Gerrout or I'll take you in for public indecency!'

Sherlock doesn't need to be told twice. He grabs me by the wrist and drags me out if the alley onto the main street like a rag doll. A very embarrassed rag doll.

_**.**_

'What the hell was that?' I hiss, high pitched like a blocked pressure cooker about to blow up. 'Did you just wake up this morning and decided to humiliate me—'

'Oh, please, John, jail was not a better option for me today', he counter argues, civil. Then with a smirk he adds: 'It's got my annoying brother there today.'

'Well, you can't just—'

'Of course I can', he interrupts me. 'It worked, did it not?'

'That's hardly the point!'

'That's entirely the point, John. We're free, you are embarrassed because your mind was briefly in the gutter, and I found _this_ – well – in the gutter. The actual gutter.' His words stumble in that awkwardness that is the hallmark of genius.

I look at the object he's holding in his slender fingers.

'How did the police miss _that_?'

In Sherlock's gloved hand is a long thin dart needle, topped with exotic looking feathers in a bunch. Overall it's not much bigger than an inch longer and it looks like a harmless prop from a varieties theatre, long before cultural appropriation vetted most callous shows.

'On your boring medical conferences, do you get to know any voodoo doctors, John?'

This being Sherlock, I can't ever tell if he's for real.

_**.**_

_**(OnHold)**_


	49. Chapter 49

_A/N: Reality has shifted for most of us. At this moment in time, many countries are dealing with a pandemic, and their citizens are facing various degrees of lockdown. Life as we knew it turned out to be a fragile reality that fleetingly changes nearly overnight, and we are in the process of adapting to new realities. Some have had a big change, others face uncertainty. In the midst of an undeniable shift, I didn't know how to format these stories anymore. Should I keep the characters suspended in a troubles-free world from our past, or should I have them as examples trying to adjust to a new footing?_

_In the end, as I'm adjusting, so did they start to show their strength and adaptability. Because I felt the need for them to reflect our present, at least for now._

_Know our troubles are not permanent, even if our reality will never go back the exact way it was before – we grow wiser, we lose things that mattered – but our heroes will not have forsaken us. They are the best part of each of us. They can still help bring sense to a changing world._

_One last thing, I'll finish Mycroft's story at some point. For now it's on hold. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

Sherlock Holmes is a tall, dark, imposing figure currently standing outside the grounds of one of the busiest hospitals in London. Hands in his pockets, angular cheekbones resting on the sharp edge of his flipped up coat collar, a bright piercing light shinning through the unusually dull and sedated grey eyes. The tall dark haired man is a permanent stark contrast silhouette on the near deserted urban landscape. Every once in a while the street bursts into action with the frenetic dance of ambulances and paramedics, or the stillness is broken by the wide eyed key worker making ends meet fulfilling his job role, or there's a fleeting appearance of a new jogger, looking red in his face and short of breath, trying to outrun his worries. The world's news, Sherlock ponders, the government's advice and the scientific experts voices, may all have changed before the runner has completed his route and returns home. The man runs as if he tries to distance himself from the heavy burden of reality as much as he outruns the breaking news bulletins.

Throughout all these cycles of activity and utterly hateful, eerie quiet – suspended in fearful suspicion and isolation – Sherlock waits. The detective is waiting for the one reason that brought him outside, the one reason that could drag him out of Baker Street these days.

Of course there are still murders, and thefts, and other crimes occurring in London and the wider world, but Sherlock no longer has the free access to them he once had. The net is tighter around the Yard. DI Lestrade will abstain from coming by 221B to hand over well thumbed files and ask for the world's greatest consulting detective's help. Lestrade is just trying to keep Sherlock safe.

Lestrade is an idiot if he thinks he can keep Sherlock safe by starving his investigative mind. But much like stocking up the pantry with food supplies, Lestrade has handed over a meagre lifeline to Sherlock Holmes, by handing him indiscriminately the contents of a cold cases store room's filing cabinet from the Yard's basement. Delivered safely to the doorstep of 221 Baker Street, disinfected thoroughly, dragged upstairs by an over eager detective that never noticed he'd break into a sweat with the workout. Inside, an assorted collection of cases whose witnesses have long died, crime scenes that have been torn down and rebuilt into new dwellings in transformed urban landscapes, and particular crimes that if avenged will benefit nearly no one anymore. Yet Sherlock is secretly thankful – John will have voiced Sherlock's thanks, and Sherlock will have abstained from grunting derisively this time – and so the detective flicks through attentively and solves each case, emailing detailed deductions back to Lestrade , who is in no hurry to taken them up.

Sherlock consumes the cold cases as a heroin addict detoxing on methadone. It's barely enough to keep the edge off.

His secondary addiction is rearing up, equally as strong.

It may be argued that Sherlock shouldn't have come, no matter the precautions. _He_ certainly will berate Sherlock, tell the detective how reckless and childish he's being. _John._ And Sherlock will listen in his best mock scolded school boy act. The reason he's currently there, at that precise location – nowhere else in the world he'd rather be, except for ward 11 inside that hospital, but Sherlock knows that's too much even for him, that's going too far these days, so he only fantasised on how easy it would be to acquire access to ward 11, he won't do it – is the reason why Sherlock remains in loyal wait outside. Waiting for doctor John Watson to unleash his surprise, anger, relief, worry, and short temper, anchoring both participants with his full blown rant about The Impossible Highness, Mr Sherlock Holmes. How else could it come to pass when John has willingly placed himself in the epicentre of danger? Such disregard for his own valuable life, in the face of Sherlock's desperate need for John to be safe, is borderline abuse of their shared friendship. Yet, Sherlock has been explained. How much John, as a doctor, needs to do his part, to help save lives, lives like those of Sherlock, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade. Lives that may be anonymous but matter so much to someone else, lives like that of John Watson, who carelessly puts himself in harm's way.

Sherlock waits. He glances at his wristwatch from time to time, but he knows, he expects, delay. Shift times are vague guidelines at times where there just aren't enough healthcare workers, and John's beautiful generosity means he'll linger and stay some more, far beyond his human ability and his emotional and mental structures are depleted of their usual strength. _He's John._

The detective in wait – if Sherlock such a thing, a detective, when he's not fully focused on useful cases anymore – is just holding onto his friendship's warm glow, using it as a lit beacon of light that John can latch onto, and may it guide him home faster. Because Sherlock knows, from experience, that John will (eventually) leave the hospital. Exhausted to a near drunken-like state. The horrors he lived through in his working hours, he'll carry in him for a while to come. And Sherlock will try to shield John from those vivid memories that fade only with time, lulled to sleep by the constancy and safety of 221B, but they never really disappear before the next hospital shift. They go into dormant hiding somewhere inside the doctor's core, far distant from his friend's grasp or influence.

Sherlock fears for John's physical and mental health, but he can't keep John from being the hero he is. Sherlock can't stop John being himself. So he won't fake an illness (not _that one_, not even Sherlock's sociopathic streak is that callous), won't blow up the kitchen with the liquid nitrogen he keeps hidden in the pantry cupboard, won't plead to the doctor to hold back and stay home safe – even if, selfishly, it's all Sherlock really wants to do.

Sherlock suspects that it's also what John wants to do, deep inside.

The obsessive detective keeps himself engaged by reciting the figures of numbers of infections, published daily since the start of the outbreak, insisting on stripping them of their meaning. Just numbers. Digits aligned to represent a measured quantity. A curving line in a direct reference, or a straight line in a logarithmic scale graph. He won't give the plotted points faces, names, lives, humanity.

It's John's job to do that. To give clients a personality in recounting their biographies, and to romanticise the habits Sherlock deduces from the traces in their appearances, to give subjective value to their professions and their amorous entanglements.

Sherlock is slowly losing the ability to remain an independent observer of facts in this world sized social experiment. Sherlock fears for his sanity. Maybe he's not such a good sociopath as he's trained himself to be.

Maybe Jim Moriarty was right. People die; that's what people do.

_**.**_

Sherlock is outside. Again. The unmistakable dark cloaked figure is a very still silhouette tonight, just outside the lamp light hallo drawing a circle on the pavement as night descends upon London. Sensibly distanced from the hospital gates entrance where the paramedics rush up in ambulances with dire state patients. The hospital is crowded like never before. Drowned by the constant stringent melody of trolley wheels, heart monitor beeps, ventilator whooshes, and rubber soled footsteps from the medical attendants.

I've barely finished my shower, got dressed, I'm heading out. I don't know how long I've spent under that shower spray, washing away the vivid memories. I've been a medic in the war, none of this should shock me, not this much...

It feels like the war has come home.

Sherlock is my secret weapon, the one who could always cast away the shadows of my nightmares, he now works his magic openly in daytime, protecting me, grounding me.

My friend is the hero here, keeping me safe, bringing me home.

So I walk out of the building.

I think I can sneak up on the detective in the worried shoulders and tense muscles. Sherlock is a bit off his game these days...

_**.**_

'What the hell are you doing here?'

John. His _John._ Sherlock turns around in immediate attention. John. The smallish doctor is pale, dishevelled, red lines rimming around his eyes where the goggles rested for relentless hours against his skin, patchworked with laughter lines and temper frown lines by time. John, his John, looking splendid and powerful in the role of the anonymous hero he has dedicated his entire life to be.

_John's alright._ He's a short statured, tense ball of anger and worry and relief, so very John-like that immediately Sherlock feels at home. John is like that, an immediate anchor.

Jim Moriarty was wrong. This is what people do. They endure, they fight, they hope. People live.

_**.**_

I think Sherlock knows. He could always read my inner thoughts, unscramble them and return them to me by means of his quick scans. I see the exhaustion and near breakdown reflected in his eyes. I also see something else. Something that always keeps me going. Sherlock sees something good, something heroic in me. I may not see it myself, but right now I trust my friend's insights better than the dark thoughts my exhausted mind conjures for me.

I trust Sherlock, an instinctive response; an automated reflex I can never help. He's the greatest detective in the world and I wait for Sherlock to make sense of the mess I'm left with on the inside, and hand me the solution, the fix.

He nearly always does.

_**.**_

I'm investigating, John', the detective quips mildly, glancing disinterested to their surroundings.

Okay, so Sherlock panicked. He couldn't tell the truth, couldn't detail the way his insides were trapped by fear of abandonment, they always are when John disappears out of Baker Street and round the corner, to the epicentre of an ongoing medical war.

John buys the lame excuse, and immediately it derails his anger, and his exhaustion is layered by innocent curiosity, perked up by the chance that Sherlock might actually be on the trail of a new case.

Sherlock almost makes one up on the spot, fruit of years of exposure to gruesome and captivating crimes. He could lure John's tired mind along the swirls and furls of intricate mysteries, adding clues and minor puzzles, distracting John from the obtrusive, heavy reality around them.

But John is exhausted and Sherlock won't goad him. It'd be cruel in the face of John's selflessness.

Sherlock gives John's heroism the time to shine it deserves, and only later, by the lit fireplace of a late march chilly evening, will Sherlock lull John's thoughts into the safe plains of the current cold cases.

'And checking up on you, John', Sherlock adds, almost despite himself.

'Whoa! You admit that? Could I have that in writing?'

The doctor's smile is bright sunlight in the grey pasty tones of his drained complexion.

Sherlock allows the briefest smile, amused.

'Don't be an idiot, John.'

There, he said it. If Sherlock Holmes ever comes close to a true and conscious compliment, this is it. John is no idiot. "Don't act like the masses, like an idiot, John. You are better then the rest of us."

But then John does the most painful thing. He sighs, deflated, and his shoulders bend, broken, exhausted. He further daggers Sherlock's feelings, unknowingly, as he looks away, in preparation to say:

'Sherlock, this is reckless and dangerous. I don't want to— I couldn't bear to see you there', he points resentfully at the hospital behind him, 'sick'.

'It won't happen. Don't be so exaggerated, John.'

'Why? Is this virus so afraid of your sharp cheekbones? Of your cloak and dagger coat? Of your pristine reputation?'

Sherlock knows it's rhetoric, but can't help answering: 'Definitely the latter.'

John breaks, incredulous over the detective's trademark cockiness. He gulps, chokes on his own upcoming words, clears his throat, looks around them and (just before Sherlock's heart clenches fatally) he bursts into high pitched – farfetched but so real – giggles.

'Besides, I came to drive you home, John. Mrs Hudson is homebound, she's lent me her car. I told you I was her favourite all along. And so I thought you'd rather a lift than a Tube ride home.'

John shakes his head, catching his breath, tears stinging his eyes. 'I hear it, you took precautions, but London is the epicentre of a large outbreak right now and I'd rather you stay safe at home.' John worries his bottom lip a moment or two, his cobalt blue eyes sticks on Sherlock's with a piercing intensity that is surprisingly uncomfortable on the detective. Sherlock is still not thoroughly accustomed to_ caring._ But this is John, and he'll let John care, he's safe in John's care. 'Sherlock, I worry about you.'

'Ditto.'

'I know first-hand what this illness can do. I want – no, I _need_ – you safe.'

'Ditto.'

'I'll move out of Baker Street and go live inside the hospital if you are reckless, Sherlock.'

'Same.'

John gets derailed. Blinking at the rate of his exhausted, sluggish thoughts. Sherlock almost could smile in victory. Heck, these days victory is so short lived and far between that Sherlock smiles anyway.

And so he turns to walk the distance to Mrs H's car.

'I'll cook dinner tonight, John.'

'You don't know how to cook.'

'I'm a certified genius, how hard can it be?'

'I'll keep the fire extinguisher handy.'

'Don't use it all up, John. I've got this carbon dioxide foam decomposition experiment—'

'Multitasking again? Clever!'

'Always, John', Sherlock states smugly. Only there's not the usual gloat and superiority in his remark. His calmer now. He's got John. His John can make it all okay till the next day.

_**.**_


	50. Chapter 50

_A/N: As a treat for the ones with time to spare, I hope you can see the 27 symbols in this piece. If not visible then I picked a useless unicode and wasted my sweet time. Rest assured, they're not essential to the story._

_Keep safe, keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'John, this is moronic! There are no good cases! Who needs a good case when a mutated virus is going round offing people for them? Murderers can sit tight and wait! As for those remaining entrepreneurial criminals, you insist we aren't to come into close contact with the criminals, so that precludes any successful chase of that cryptocurrency thieve anyway!'

I drop my forehead into the palm of my hand whilst counting up to ten. We've been through this ten times already. Sherlock even agrees with our decisions – _in principle_.

'You've sent the relevant deductions to the Metropolitan Police, Sherlock, and I don't quite feel like tackling down potentially infected suspects in between my hospital shifts! It works both ways, you know? I can potentially infect patients I see at the emergency _if I catch the virus!'_

Sherlock blinks, presses his lips and gulps drily only to grimace at the taste of that particular silenced thought. 'Nonsense, John. You're a doctor, you know better than to get contaminated.'

I hiccup a dry laugh, more like a spasm than a fit of joy.

'Sherlock, we'll just have to adjust. I have one work I need to continue fulfilling, and you, the greatest detective in the history of London, will have to work from home.'

'Flattery will get you nowhere with me, John.'

I raise an eyebrow in a silent dare. He breaks not long after, briskly getting up to fetch a laptop. My laptop, in fact, just to have the last word. His was far closer to begin with.

'Want me to tell you my latest password, mate?

'Nah, I'll study the oily deposits from your greasy fingertips. Really, John, you shouldn't read the news while having...' he actually sniffs the keyboard '...a near full English breakfast. No black pudding, not a favourite, I'm guessing.'

I shrug, nonplussed for anyone to see, but as I turn to the kitchen I'm hiding my admiration smile. Sherlock's still got it. However, I can't let his ego get any bigger than it already is. It would no longer fit inside 221B.

'John!'

'What?'

'John!'

'What!'

'There are no good cases, John! There's a missing train station cat, a man who swears he didn't know he had his wife's body in the boot of his car, and a church steeple got graffitied with unknown hieroglyphs!'

I blink. _Plenty to go on there, mate._

'I'm off to the hospital in a couple of hours. Surprise me', I quip back.

A good way to goad Sherlock into compliance is to issue him a challenge. He's a textbook overachiever.

'How am I supposed to locate a missing cat if you don't let me leave 221B?'

Licking the spoon I used to swirl my tea I return in slow steps to the living room and dive on my armchair, right in front of Sherlock in his own armchair.

_I'll miss this homely feeling all day._

'Spyware on the traffic cameras?' I'm sure Mycroft Holmes can give a hand with that...

One silly suggestion is all that is required to trigger Sherlock into proving he has the greater mind, so I wait with baited breath.

'Actually, that's not a bad idea, John...' He gets up from his chair, dumping my laptop in my lap, absent-minded. 'Also delivery drivers. They crisscross the city all the time. Bin collectors. They go into the dead end alleys. And mains power line electricians. They go up poles and gain better view over the rooftops of low constructions and— I could dress up as a—'

'No leaving the house, Sherlock', I remind him sternly of the rules.

'Then what do I do when I find the missing cat?'

'Lure him home. You'll find a way, you always do.'

He grumps slightly – _the rules are wrong!_ – but I can see his engagement.

A bit more relieved, I go take that hot shower and ready myself for the day ahead.

_**.**_

One of the unspoken rules between Sherlock and I is that he no longer asks me about my day at work. Not that he quite ever did more than a very skewed version of "how's your day been, honey", it's just not fair game to bring up my new daily work at a new kind of battlefield.

As an amendment to the rule, Sherlock is, as always, allowed to perform his sideshow mind reading act on me; deducing my day, my aches, my load. But he won't breach the subject until I do, and for now I never do. It's not so much about repressing events as is about diving eagerly straight into the distracting, escapist world of Sherlock's work.

_Sherlock is still the best distraction I could ask for._

In exchange for blatantly using my friend as a survival device, I will offer him all my support in his chosen profession, in his love for his work, under threat of existence right now.

This is only the beginning.

Sherlock has been busy all day, and has succeeded in tracing the hieroglyph markings left on a church steeple overnight, miles away from London. He's also spent some time interviewing locals on that rural community through the web cam – for which he tells me he suffered greatly, as this is usually a job best left to his faithful blogger.

'Were they nice? Those people you tracked down to talk about the graffiti?'

Sherlock's utmost outraged expression is priceless. 'They – were – boring', he nearly crushes every syllable, over-pronouncing _boring_. 'Utterly, mind blowing boring. Dull, short witted, below average, slow. John, your absence from our work pains me exceedingly.'

'Ta.' I smirk. Sherlock does love to go a long way about to deliver me an appreciative compliment. Up until now, the detective was probably unaware of how boring my assistant work can be. But, of course, everyone is boring according to Sherlock, which will have made his work the more difficult. I kind of enjoy talking to various personalities, extracting clues, and motives, and trying to solve the case just as much as Sherlock.

'Those are runes, by the way', Sherlock comments, offhand. 'They could have been different pasta shapes for all that matters. They were brought together as a transposition cypher. One symbol per alphabet letter, English being the probable language given the location and that it was a crude message to someone within the vicinity of the church. At a time where bigger travels are very much halted, and news reports have only one consistent main topic, it could hardly have been designed as a message to travel beyond the village core, John. You can see no spacing between words, but one word would not be this long. So we'll have to part the message as we transpose it. For that we will need the code breaker.'

'You're sure this is an actual message to an actual person?' I frown, desperately gulping down my soup. I'm starving after a 12 hours shift with minimal breaks.

Sherlock politely ignores that I'm talking with my mouth full now.

'Absolutely, John. It's far too much effort for a prank.'

'You know phone lines are still working. Calling the person who it was meant for would have been easier than climbing a church wall, just saying.'

Sherlock stops abruptly and looks up, blatantly shocked.

'John!'

'What!'

He breaks into a triumphant smirk. 'My genius is starting to rub off on you, come along!'

I get up at once. 'What? To the living room?'

_These days are odd._

'Bring your nourishment, John', he snaps after a quick glance.

I obey that directive without qualms.

Setting myself over Sherlock's shoulder as he's taken my armchair – of all places he just sits there as normal as he gets, he really must be out if whack, is this dome new habit when I'm out of the flat? – I study the laptop screen. A bunch of apparently unrelated symbols pop out of the darkened stone of a church's steeple.

ᛒ

'No, you've got me stumped', I admit easily. 'Maybe you should start with the missing feline, Sherlock. You know, something to ease you in...'

The detective death glares at me. I shrug and carry my soup bowl back to the kitchen.

'Will you have solved a case before I leave for work tomorrow?' I ask over my shoulder.

'Naturally, John', is the reflexive answer I get.

_**.**_

Water droplets dribble down the ashy features, reflected back by the bathroom mirror. I almost don't recognise the squared jaw line, the upturned nose, the frequent wrinkles embedded on the skin, the dark blue eyes looking back a bit haunted yet.

'John?'

I startle at the presence materialised behind me. Sherlock. All soft gestures and smoothing tone of voice, yet I recoil slightly, leaning away, over the sink. Sherlock tries to appease me with unspoken words, bland smiles and keeping his hands out in a peaceful stance. I force myself to gulp drily, to master my own creaky voice, to lie, lie until lies become the truth – 'I'm alright, Sherlock. Just a bad dream.'

He nods, scanning me, nonetheless.

Casually as he can perform it, he grabs a fluffier bath sheet towel from the cupboard and wraps it over my shoulders. I shiver at the cotton's contact with my damp pyjama top. Sherlock won't relent the comforting pressure of the towel's weight.

_Sherlock's learnt a trick or two about this caring malarkey._

'I'm sorry I woke you, Sherlock.'

Finally he feels compelled to talk, maybe that's what I wanted, I needed to hear those familiar baritone tones.

'Just drop it, John.' There's no bite in his words. 'I needed an audience', he further says. 'I've solved it.'

'The missing cat case?'

'All three cases.'

'That's amazing, Sherlock.'

'No, you're amazing, John. I just use my brains better than you. Come, we can talk in the kitchen. You can make us tea.'

'Not taking advantage one bit, are you?'

'Don't be an idiot. Making tea soothes you, and I enjoy your tea. It's a win-win arrangement.'

I chuckle a bit and Sherlock takes heart, guiding me to the kitchen. My latent nightmare's imprints fade a bit more as I let the familiar setting ground me. I tick the kettle and reach for the fragrant tea bags in half a stupor yet, but it's not so scary now I know Sherlock is watching over me.

Daylight begins to break outside the window.

'It wasn't Afghanistan', I blurt out, filling the empty silence. 'I expected Kandahar, I got London. It's not the same, of course not, but in my dream, it felt the same. Oppressing. I was powerless, frightened, tired.' I look straight behind me to Sherlock, still catching that emotional, sympathetic expression in his face – if he'd known he had it on, he'd have run off into the bathroom to scrub it off his face. Instead Sherlock looks me straight on, waiting for me to finish what I have to say.

But I think I'm done for today.

I bring the two tea mugs over.

Sherlock perfunctorily sips a bit of tea, his grey-green eyes stuck on me.

'And your cases?' _Please, Sherlock._

'Puerile. The cat is the real hero', he dismisses. Then smiles, knowing he's captured my attention. 'The church steeple case, John. An unknown individual goes through an acrobatic effort of significant neck breaking risk to leave strange markings on a stone wall. A mere decoy, so our attention is efficiently deflected from the graveyard, where a recent grave has been reopened, the ground revolved. The priest has confirmed my suspicions on site. He recalls the burial in question. A woman was laid to rest, the ceremony including a grieving husband and some young adult children.

'As it happens, John, the nosey old hag across from the church is also neighbour of the grieving husband. Living alone she's got the habit of spying his life for her entertainment. Just two days ago she was watching from behind her curtains and saw him sitting on the sofa (he never plumps the cushions like his late wife did) watching a rerun of _The Antiques Roadshow_ on the telly. He suddenly jumped up (spilling tea from a Chinese bone China tea cup set the neighbour's grandmother had given them as a wedding gift, all over the carpet). He rushes to the telly just as the experts were appreciating a gaudy ring much like the one his wife had.'

Sherlock expectantly eggs me on. I frown. _No idea._ He sighs, rolling his eyes.

'The husband finds out the wife's ring was very valuable. He wants it back. Only there's a problem. She was buried with it. Everyone thought it was a mere trinket. And ugly too. Now he wants it back. The authorities won't exhume a body just like that. He needs to do it himself. Just a quick visit, open the coffin, take the ring, put it all back. The body hasn't been buried long, the soil is not tightly compacted yet, the body won't have decomposed gruesomely. He decides to go that night. Calls a friend to meet him there. They both turn up, armed with a shovel and a bucket of paint. Emboldened, the friend scales the church, leaving the mysterious message as a decoy. The husband takes on the gruesome bit, but he's come so far and his greed motivates him. Luck will have it the burial site, under a laurel tree, is secluded from view from the neighbours, and no one notices the climber either. The husband works fast to acquire the piece. Then everything goes wrong...'

'His wife rises from the coffin like a zombie?'

'John, if you're not being serious—'

'Sorry, Sherlock. Please carry on. Can't see what happened next.'

'Nor could I, for a long while. Then it hit me. Let me go back a bit. Remember the church message?'

'Yeah, gibberish.'

'Not quite. I decoded it.'

'How did you do that?'

'Using a decoder ring.'

'What?'

'From a 1970s cereal box, a children's breakfast treat. _Swap your own spy messages with your friends._'

'Really?'

'Worry not, John, I've acquired a couple for us. Anyhow, the husband used the enigma printed on the cereal box itself, as all he wanted was a satanic looking pronouncement to inflict on the centuries old church.'

'So what does it say?'

'It says, and I quote, _a surprise inside the cereal box! _Exclamation mark not included due to poor runes grammar.'

I chuckle, and so does Sherlock.

'Below on the graveyard the grave robber wanted the antique ring. As it turns out ring was stuck due to the natural bloating occurring in a decomposing corpse. The husband must have heard noises, or perhaps time was generally running out. He had to leave the scene, but he wouldn't abandon the corpse with the fortune. He heard a loud snap of a twig, perhaps, and he turned with shovel in hand and whacked the intruder. He hit his friend, the climber, that was coming to join him. A bit precocious. Now, you're a doctor, it's not easy to off someone with one haphazard blow of a shovel. That was confusing for me. I have inferred the climber lost balance, tripped over something, and that sent him off in a dangerous dive into the coffin in the grave. Hit his head fatally, perhaps. I think it's safe to admit he died on the spot.

'Now the grieving husband really needs to get out of there. He pulls on the dead finger but only manages to dislodge the phalanges inside, not detach a finger. So much for the aid of decomposition! The wife still hangs on to the ring, the day is breaking, and he has two bodies to dispose off. Cool headed, he shoves the wife's corpse into the boot of his car, planning to dispose of it later after extricating his reward. He hastily closes the coffin on the new occupant, and replaces most soil. Being a secluded location under a laurel tree in a small graveyard, and given the scandal of the secret message on the church stones, no one seemed to have noticed the revolved soil on a recently dug grave.

'The husband could have got away with it. Only he snuck into his car only to be stopped by the police soon after, due to a broken tail light and the police wanting to advise him against unnecessary travelling. The police officer noticed the smell and asked to see the boot of his car. The policeman finds a man with his wife's dead body in the car boot. But she's missing a finger...'

'So the husband did manage to get to the ring?'

'No, not the husband at all.'

'I don't get it.'

'Easy, John. A mile away, at a train station, a missing cat has wandered back home, like lost felines sometimes do. He looked well, unharmed, a bit muddy. The station master was overjoyed by the sight of his beloved cat, coming back on duty, and even bringing him a treat! Usually the grim treats are half eaten birds or mangled field mice, but this time it was none of that. Just one fat, bloated, ringed finger... Remember the climber must have tripped on something by the open coffin? Cats will do that. Particularly cats with their eyes on an easy prize. A nearly detached finger on a corpse inside an open car boot while the husband fills up a grave is an easy target.'

'That's gross.'

Sherlock shrugs. 'The cat wasn't hungry, he didn't eat it. Took it home to share with the humans. I quite like the cat. I will follow his social media page after this... John, can we get a cat? I'm sure we can train the cat to fetch us small autopsy specimens. You have a free desk space upstairs in your room, right? We don't need much space to perform autopsies on smallish corpses brought in by a cat. They can't haul big preys, cat's jaws are—'

'Sherlock!'

'Spoilsports.'

'Sherlock, you've already set up your amateur radio on my desk, remember?'

'Oh, right, that explains the disembodied voices coming from the walls, today.'

'Sherlock?'

'Just kidding, John, I turned off the radio by midday, after a short but thorough investigation of the premises.'

I smirk knowingly. My friend would have half-welcomed an intruder by now.

'Sherlock, that was gruesome, and I'm a bit queasy, but it was amazing work. Seriously amazing.'

'Thanks, John... Will you have to go to work tomorr— today?'

I shake my head. Day off. Sherlock smiles, as if thankful of my luck.

'You have markedly reduced shivering and colour is returning to your cheeks. John, I'll have a go at cooking you breakfast.'

I smile, quietly content for this moment in time, this peaceful existence, this respite.

'I'll keep the fire extinguisher on the ready.'

_**.**_


	51. Chapter 51

_A/N: __It's what people do. They endure, they fight, they hope. People live._

_Keep safe, keep strong._

_By the way, I hope this is any good. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

The instantly recognisable sight of the expectant detective in the long wool coat echoes with the familiarity of home and safety. Dark, disarrayed curls top a long vertical line of tailored coat, a pillar of strength in human terms.

I'm fully appreciative of Sherlock's constancy and friendship, as I leave another 12 hours shift at one of London's hospitals. A bit exhausted, a bit broken, somewhat humbled.

'Hi, Sherlock.'

As always my friend was turned towards the street, where random people and cars hardly pass by to afford him a chance for deductions – an ever present exercise the detective likes to use to fend off boredom, and occasionally the rest of humanity.

'John!' There's unabashed relief as my friend turns, already voicing my given name. As if I had just focused a million scattered thoughts into one achievable object of study.

Sherlock's relief is nothing to be ashamed of. I feel the same every time I leave the hospital to find my friend in his usual vigil, outside the gates.

The great detective once again runs a brief diagnosis analysis on me and, pressing his lips together tightly at the end of the cycle, he briskly starts pacing away, _away from the hospital lest an evil virus finds a way to contaminate me on the very street._ I follow suit, amused by this new collective distrust of public spaces we now all endure, logical or not.

Sherlock seems healthy too; the analysis works both ways. As he fully focuses his scrutiny on me, I check his breathing, colour, temperature signs, the lot.

I follow suit behind my friend, heading towards Mrs Hudson's car.

_By the way, our landlady remains perfectly healthy and will outlive us all, I'm sure._

_She's been accounting for her good health on the doctor tenant she keeps, to Mrs Turner, next door. I keep telling Mrs Hudson that's not how it works, and I'm quite sure she knows, but she's still happy to publicise me as her lucky charm._

Sherlock surprises me by overdoing his kindness, as he opens the passenger's car door for me. My friend can be awkward as he navigates this new caring malarkey, but I find his innocence a proof of genuineness.

I bet my work colleagues both think that I've got a boyfriend and he's loaded (as per Mrs H's car). I find I don't really care if they think Sherlock is my sugar daddy. They are welcome to keep their gossiping hobby for the duration of this global pandemic. Anything that helps keep the troops morale...

'Solved a new case while I was gone?' I ask. I just about feel the smugness emanating in waves from the detective.

'_Yes'_, he admits in a voracious tone of voice that Mrs Hudson would correctly identify as "positively indecent". Whatever the case I missed, Sherlock really enjoyed it.

'Cold case, John! As cold as the come. A man was found dead inside a big fireplace, burnt on the inside. No burn marks on his skin or clothes, only the internal organs suffered fatal third degree burns. The man was found propped up on top of a pile of half-charred logs. Not his own dwellings, but an abandoned stately mansion in advanced state of dereliction. About in the room, no matches, no candles, no lasers, no functioning gas or electrics. In fact, upon thorough research, the only extraneous object found in the room was a lost tablespoon, and the police can't tell how long that's even been there.'

'A tablespoon?' I repeat, trying to distract Sherlock into spilling the beans on the whole thing.

Sherlock nods. 'The victim, since you don't really ask me, was, according to the autopsy report, a young adult make, healthy prior to his death. No hits on the fingerprints yet, and he wasn't carrying any form of ID... A man burnt from within, found in a cold, unlit fireplace... How was it done and who did it?'

I blink. _How should I know?_ Yet Sherlock found out. He solved this already. With as many clues as he's giving me... _Why can't I solve this?_

_Because I'm not Sherlock ruddy Holmes._

'You're sure the victim suffered internal injuries only?' I start, as Sherlock peacefully glides the comfortable car through the well known streets.

'Internal injuries only', the detective confirms.

'And the house was empty?'

'All services disconnected for years. One jimmied back door, through where, presumably, the victim entered the house, lured to his death.'

I notice Sherlock gave me a free lead to hurry me along, but I won't complain.

'Anything suspicious about the victim's clothing?' I ask, trying to be clever. Sherlock would have been all over the victim, invading its personal space. Sherlock won't do personal space with dead bodies, much in the least the several feet away normal folks usually do. Sherlock would have been kneeling by the body, crouching over it, prodding it with a finger for tenderness.

He's working remotely now, in detriment of his perfected methods of work.

'The victim was well dressed for your standards, John. Casual. Poorly colour coordinated socks.'

I ignore the personal jibe.

'Any suspicious vehicles around the property, according to any witnesses?'

Witnesses are hard to come by, but are still fair game in post-self-isolation detective work. If anything, people are noisier than ever, missing their own social interactions.

'I had to do my fair bit of hacking at a governmental data base. According to a bus lane traffic camera nearby there was an ice cream van heading towards the property. The footage was too blurry to pick up on passengers or drivers.'

Sherlock looks expectantly at me now.

I should already have all the information I need.

I don't know. And now my head hurts.

Sherlock's smugness breaks as he stops the car to evaluate me at the traffic lights. Somehow I must pass his exam for he impatiently starts detailing the answer to the riddle just as the set of lights turns green.

'A few young adults peer pressure each other to break isolation and "party on like it's 2020". That's a direct quote, by the way, I chased them down in the end. They had a private online chat room I infiltrated, it was aptly named "Losers Keep Out". So these hyped up idiots knew of a parked ice cream van that they nicked in a fit of antisocial behaviour. A parked and out of commission van, it was unsettling to find it still contained ice cream doe stored inside. I was told it was full of ice cream, well, not very iced ice cream. The most idiot of the lot consuming the sugary creamy doe remembered his father had a batch of dry ice stored in the family business premises. They decided to mix some dry ice in the ice cream to chill it, but didn't account for the solid carbon dioxide, or dry ice, to instantly freeze their digestive tract upon contact, causing severe burns. As you well know, John, it's not just fire that burns you. Ice burns too. The idiot friends – undeserving of the title – bolted a the disaster became apparent for the first trier. An ice cream licked tablespoon was all that was left behind... I believe it's a modern dark medical take on gluttony and boredom, John.'

'Oh, that was brilliant. Ice cream vans and dry ice. Yeah, brilliant.' For once my praise comes out _a but fake. What's wrong with me?_

Deep down it nags me; a feeling of isolation – and not the social kind, but triggered by the circumstances of that type.

I've been left out of Sherlock's colourful world. My own, a bit dark grey and shadowy right now. Of course I don't resent Sherlock, he's doing his best work, benefitting the world in his own peculiar and unique way. Yet, unfair to Sherlock as it may be, I'm resenting _being left out._

I go to my hospital work instead, and I'm good at what I do – what I do is sometimes referred to as Saving Lives, not that I'd brag about it – but Sherlock's work; I miss being a part of that.

_The world I love carries on without me._

I miss being an integral part of Sherlock's work, a consideration at the forefront of my friend's mind, where I was sure to be included in the cases Sherlock worked on. Be it in a conversation over the facts at the breakfast table before leaving for my work at the hospital, or a number of missed texts at the end of my shift with a recorded trail of monologue deductions... I think my friend has been wisely adjusting to my absences. _I think he's gone and took it up with the skull again._

Without Sherlock's steadying influence from a brazen world of fantastical mysteries and superb sleuthing, I feel trapped at the deep end of my medical work, and that can be grim at a time of global pandemic, understandably so.

'John...?'

'Oh.' I snap back to the moment. 'You were brilliant, Sherlock.'

He blinks. 'For driving us home through the nearly deserted streets of London?' my friend deadpans sarcastically.

He's right. Rush hour seems hone, although there are still plenty of private and hire vehicles about. It's still London. Sherlock even managed to park at Baker Street. I look on up to our flat across the street. It looks relentlessly the same, unaffected by time or circumstances, and it comforts me.

'Just drop it, John. As much as I love to hear a praise like any other human, I draw the line at genuine praise.'

'I'll get myself a thesaurus for variety, if it helps.'

'John, something is troubling you, and you seem a bit apathetic. Are you upset?' the _with me_ is pronounced silently.

My heart clenches at that. To see the cocky detective suddenly reduced to insecurity after a brilliant display of his mind's work is just wrong. _I've screwed up royally._

I make no effort to leave the car. This journey isn't over yet. 'Do you have any other cases? Any I can help with?' My voice betrays me, _pleading_.

His green eyes round on my face, the lines surrounding his mouth soften. Something fleetingly crosses his expression. As if he's planned a course of action. But it's not a trap he lures me into, but the plain truth.

'You think you didn't participate in my success, John. You are very mistaken. Upon your absence, I sat on my armchair with the tea you left for me. I spoke to the Union Jack cushion on your chair (and I should protest it was most uncooperative, John, you do a far better job yourself). I used your laptop to infiltrate a governmental database (child's play!) and extract the needed files. Success followed suit, much as I expected, but then something else. Something kept nagging me even as I went for a shower. Something _wrong_. I was very much in a state of undress when I realised what was wrong. You, John, you would have insisted I'd tell the police my findings at once. I was forced to call Lestrade.'

'Oh, right, Lestrade. How's he doing?'

'Full of key work to do, just like you. He sends you his generic greetings. Asks me never to call him naked again.'

I blink. 'You video conferenced from our bathroom? You, the man who prefers to text, just conference called Greg Lestrade from the shower?'

The detective rolls his eyes, but I can tell he's amused too. 'He never reads my texts now. Says he's too busy, likely excuse...'

I shake my head. 'Was Donovan there?'

'Yes. She had her mouth open but I couldn't get a word out of her.'

Oh, Sherlock will have kept to minimal decency standards throughout the call by angling his phone waist up; that may have annoyed Donovan the more. I shake my head knowingly, and finally open the passenger's door.

'You did it on purpose', I throw over my shoulder.

He shrugs and bangs the driver's door shut. 'I was bored and you weren't around to advise me, John! I'll have you know you work too much. Lestrade will soon get in touch with you to tell you the same. He said that.'

I chuckle all the way across the street. We're nearing the famed 221 Baker Street door when my phone chimes. I glance at Sherlock who fishes his key out of a pocket so I can read the email.

'Lestrade just sent us a link to a bunch of cold cases.' It's the mother load; the cold cases database of the New Scotland Yard, London.

'I notice he sent it _to you_, John.'

'What do you mean?' I ask, heading inside as Sherlock politely gestures me in first. He'll do that now. As if I'm a precious thing to take extreme care of. I make sure of retribution in kind; but just in case it won't last I also make sure to appreciate it.

'I trust you haven't forgotten you're my social handler, John.'

'What, did you conference call Lestrade from the shower just to make me pay more attention to you, tell you off for it? What are you? A five year old on a sugar high?'

There's that same old smugness emanating from Sherlock Holmes, like a vibrating purring from a well fed, satiated feline.

'And to get access to the cold cases database where I can find you some participation around the clock, John!' he adds, brilliant.

I fake a groan, while we finally close the front door to the world and Sherlock yells Mrs Hudson that we're home.

Because we are very much home.

_**.**_


	52. Chapter 52

_A/N: __I wanted another play at the two narrators complementing points of view. I know it's not the standard style of this collection, but I needed to balance the John-centric narrative. And this came about._

_Keep safe, keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

This is what a quiet, strong hero looks like.

Sherlock Holmes has been unapologetically staring at his sleeping flatmate. Friend. Partner. _Best_ _mate_.

That's what John calls it, being best mates – _the_ _connection they have_ – and John's the experienced one. Feelings are clearly John's milieu.

Sometimes it still gets to Sherlock. That he'd have a best friend. Or a reliable friend, for that matter. Least of all, a friend such as John Watson. A strong, brave man who enjoys Sherlock's eccentricities, who admires Sherlock for all the traits others in the past have so willingly labelled the detective as a weirdo, a misfit, an aberration. John sees valorous strength in Sherlock in the days Sherlock can't see much sense in his own choices and actions. John sees beyond the smoke and mirror tricks with which the detective dazzles the world, and admires Sherlock for the showmanship not the spectacle. The short blond doctor reads and navigates through the consulting detective's tantrums because there's a moratorium on body parts from Molly at the morgue for as long as the pandemic lasts and it's not safe – _it's lasting forever_ – and John quietly incentivises Sherlock to solve cold cases, study science, or play the violin; an object beloved to the taller man, but that the restlessness of a disrupted quotidian had made farfetched and discomfiting in its echoes of better days.

Just a couple of hours ago, Sherlock once again played his violin. He should know it's been a while. His bruised fingertips throb and his long neck feels a bit stiff from resting his chin against the smooth surface, leaning towards the curvaceous crafted instrument and bow.

For weeks now, Sherlock had avoided playing his violin. Its haunting melodic performances best saved for the cold evenings after the physical exertion and mindful victory of another criminal chase. One of those all too common evenings where Sherlock and John return to 221B tired, dirty, sometimes wet (from rain, a gutter, the Thames, or all three). When John fights the adrenaline flowing through his compact lithe body, and he's still too hyped up, his left hand trembling, his leg muscles spasmodically twitching under the fabric of the jeans, his expression filled eyes still too quick to chase shadows across the room. Sherlock finds it his duty to play then, lulling John's quiet undertones back to the surface, bringing out the domestic doctor, until John is fully back home safely.

Some other times, playing the violin is less peaceful, but more cathartic, as when Sherlock is in the throes of a complicated case with too few leads (too many, contradicting leads are the easy cases, it's the cases drenched in blurred shaped unknown that give the detective no footing to climb up from the abyss of obsession). Rationality prevails and at a moment of cathartic ecstasy – both in the whirlwind melody and in the firing synapses of his light speed brain – the solution comes together and Sherlock's endorphin high is mightier than any opioid in the world Sherlock could ever experiment on (but he wouldn't, he promised John as much and he meant it).

There are no good cases now, stuck at home as a grounded misbehaving child on account of a big bad virus that Sherlock – for the record! – had absolutely no hand in.

It's odious how much it has limited Sherlock's movement and shut down all good cases. A hand full of cold cases badly investigated from the onset is Sherlock's meagre dietary supply for the time being. Again, why is Sherlock being punished?

A third favoured moment to share the limelight with the warm sounds of his violin are homely celebrations at Christmas, at birthdays, and every astronomical blue moon (John hasn't picked up on that last one yet, and Sherlock has just about given up on the too frequent habit of dismaying over the doctor's inattentiveness). Those are the rare instances when Sherlock's adopted extended family gets to see that side of the detective that he'd usually keep locked up under the cold reasoning façade.

John was the one incentivising Sherlock to play the violin at the get-togethers. There were no get-togethers before John. Sherlock had no real inkling anyone would actually welcome hearing him play. Sure he knew he was dexterous at playing the violin – he was methodical in his practise and confident with a number of difficult scores from the classical masters, and has even written his own pieces from time to time, developing his personal style. But apart from his mother at times in his infancy, no one had been brought in to witness the exercise. In fact, he'd at times got the opposite reaction to joy from the ones within earshot of his music. Mycroft's squeaky pre-teen voice had often yelled across the family home "keep the racket down, you moron!". Sibling love is a twisted thing. At the halls of his Uni residence he'd been yelled "play some hip-hop and come out of the dark ages!" and several blanket profanities. Sherlock had indignantly hacked at his violin in discordant screeches and harrowing chords until security was called and Sherlock had to find a new dorm. In fairness, Sherlock had managed to stay up playing the violin for three days straight before moving out, feelings too hurt to express himself another language than the one coming out of his violin. His fingertips a sad mangled sight at the end of those three days, no wonder.

Sherlock looks down on his reddened, slightly swollen fingertips, and this time he can safely say, it was worth it.

Chronologically he hadn't played nearly as long, even taking in relative time analogies. Perhaps it was the intent he had placed and infused in every penetrating note with which he had reached out to the sleeping doctor, knocked on the edges of his unconscious mind, beckoned to be let inside, to roam free and tidy up that cluttered space, to cool down the frustration and exhaustion of a hero on a deadly battle fight, being pulled in and out of the battlefield in long shifts and expected to make sense of the haunting game on his own and cope with the losses in the interim. It had been building up for days. Sherlock saw it coming. John was drowning in apathy; numbness the preferred self-harm mechanism of choice for an army soldier, battling on at the surface. The deep wrinkles, too deep on the young face of a hero, had ashen through badly slept nights, the dark pools under the eyes echoing those trophy shadows he carried with him, incapable of abandoning them. As if letting go of the memory of lost patients was a disrespect to the lives once lived, and the ones left mourning. Or as if the good doctor felt he needed to constantly worry about those pulling through as a superstition to keep them on the right side of healthy. John was carrying too many patients, too many consciousnesses in his own, and was overwhelmed by the numbers. Even in John's quiet strength they became too many. Sherlock knew the had become too many when he heard the first half-strangled, half-sobbed shout from the sofa. The exhausted doctor who had just fallen into an easy doze, after yet another long shift at the hospital, had dangerously tipped into the throes of a nightmare.

Sherlock suspects John had been surrounding himself with his dark shadows, rallying them up in his sleep, hoping to marshal them into submission, to make sense of them, and heal them in his sleep as he couldn't in real life, only to succumb in a desperate fight. John refuses to part with his shadows, always tries to reason with those memories, same old John, too reasonable and sensible. The shadows don't always comply.

So Sherlock did the only thing he could think of, with a mechanical reflex of his hand he reached out to his violin case, brought out both violin and bow, soon producing a melodic defence wall to John's shadows. It took some building, and there were some unknown booby traps in the unconscious fields of the soldier and doctor, but in the end Sherlock once more restored a safety net around his friend's resting mind.

John sleeps now, peacefully. Sherlock is incredibly thankful. And the detective looks on.

_**.**_

'Sherlock?'

My voice is groggy and pasty, as I glance around and immediately relax at the familiar sight of 221B's living room. _What am I doing here? Did I fall asleep on the sofa?_

'You're staring at me', I mutter, still a bit groggy.

Sherlock is smiling, and I could get angry at that, but I don't sense he's mocking me. Maybe he's just thought of something funny. _He's got a big brain, it can get a big crowded in there with a lot of thoughts. I hope he's got a couple of good jokes in there too._

'How observant, John.'

Okay, now _that_ is mocking me. I push through my stiff muscles to get up. A nice cuppa will do me a world of good.

'Are you getting bored again, mate? You could always read a book or play the violin. You know I love hearing you play the violin...'

His smile mysteriously shifts sideways, a fully fledged smirk.

Burying his hands in his pockets – wonder why he'd do that – he says: 'Oh, I don't know, John, maybe not tonight. Give it a couple of days, will you?'

It's an odd answer, I contemplate as I bring the kettle to a boil. 'Yeah, sure. How about giving Mrs Hudson a call? Make sure she's alright?'

Sherlock nods. It's a sign of the shifting times that he won't protest at the appointed task. He normally would, because it wasn't his idea, and I haven't tricked him into thinking it was his idea. I'm still collecting tea bags and mugs, when Sherlock gets the call on speaker, taking an elegant sprawl on the now vacant sofa, as if reclaiming it for himself.

'Oh, Sherlock dear, that was wonderful!' soon come the excited tones of our landlady's voice, answering from downstairs. Beats shouting across the landing. I hand the detective a tea mug. He nods the briefest acknowledgment, ignoring my latent questions. _What did I miss? _'How I loved it! How about some Paganini next?' she adds.

Sherlock chokes on his tea, and I don't get to sit down with mine, I'm already soothing and checking over my friend. He's sputtering and coughing, and pushing me away, and I'm feeling guilty and confused – have I made such horrible tea (is that oxymoron a possible thing)?

I dismiss Mrs Hudson telling her not to worry and good night (no reason ever to not be polite), before I turn all my attention to the skinny detective (getting skinnier through the long suffering days).

'Sherlock, deep breaths, mate.'

'I'm alright', he manages, clearing his throat repeatedly. _What he hell brought this on?_ I'm holding his back up with an arm wrapped around him, carefully studying his breathing. He stops pushing me away and suddenly pulls me into a heartfelt hug.

I find no difficulty in reciprocating the hug.

It's a weird tense time for all of us. Maybe we no longer need a fully rational reason for a hug these days.

'Better?' I ask, as he starts awkwardly pulling apart. He nods, childlike shy.

_I feel better myself too._

'Just drop it, John', he pre-empts as I pull up breath to say something jokey about two blokes hugging each other.

I huff, a bit surprised at the mind reading, but diverge instead.

'Wanna watch some mindless drivel on the telly instead?'

It can give Sherlock a chance to stack up his mind powers against the unrealistic ingenuity of crime drama screenwriters. Sherlock usually demolishes the investigative procedures featured (DNA analysis takes longer than that, her dress would have shed fibres all over the crime scene, did he just pick up evidence off the floor with bare hands and he is running it for prints? John this is terrible! Even Anderson does a marginally better job on his off days!)

Sherlock nods to the telly suggestion and shuffles over so I can sit next to him on the sofa. He hands me the remote and I turn over channel after channel to find something to distract us both from the strangeness that has befallen the world outside our windows.

Silently, and slowly so to wait for valid consent from my ascetically educated friend, I wrap an around behind his back and lean in to his warm shoulder. He hums tonelessly, in a way I know to recognise as _it's alright_. Soon I find his chin resting atop my head (damned height difference!), making mine shift to the crook of his neck where it fits comfortably. The telly drivels on. The cold tea dregs taint inner rims in our old mugs.

_**.**_


	53. Chapter 53

_A/N: Keep safe, keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'Sherlock, what are you doing?'

'I'm dressing up to amuse myself and fend off the ennui, John.'

'How's that any different from what you already do?' I'm finding this too odd.

After a second he returns, a mix of surprised and suspicious:

'What do I usually dress up like, according to my blogger?'

'Like... like...' what am I calling it? 'Like Sherlock Holmes!' I blurt out. 'With the violin and the deerstalker and the pristine suits and the cold rationality aloofness!'

He blinks. 'Do you reckon I need a make over then?'

We both dedicate a couple of seconds to mull it over.

'_Nah.'_

'_Nope.'_

'Just... carry on', I say, a bit speechless.

'Thank you, John', he retorts sarcastic, but fond.

I look around me, surprised at finding myself in Sherlock's bedroom (and yes, I knocked!) 'Oh, right, Lestrade is going to video call us later, if you'd care to join us.'

'Sure', says the unaffected detective trawling through his trunk of disguises.

He's still wearing the turban though. I don't think he means any cultural appropriation, certainly not disrespectfully. He once told me part of his haul was bought from a traveller passing by his family's home when he was still a teenager. Again, he's also mentioned most had been donated by a theatre company that was downsizing their costume department. And once he fleetingly mentioned almost all of it had once been his brother's, before Mycroft got too fat to wear them. Whatever the true origin of the strange collection, Sherlock has been adding to it over the years, like another man could be chasing rare items to a stamps collection. Sometimes the disguises, aka costumes, come handy on a case. Just not as much as Sherlock would have me believe.

As it turns out, as an actor, Sherlock replies more heavily on social clues to make his journeys into characterisation believable. Actual tears on a grieving best friend (who was never introduced to the wife), a fluorescent vest on a city worker (who wears really expensive leather shoes), or a folded up piece of paper to portray the innocent priest's collar (but that one didn't fool Miss Adler).

I think the trunk full of costumes, aka disguises, just appeals to Sherlock's showmanship.

It might get a laugh out of Lestrade too, later.

'Sherlock, I'll call you when Greg rings', I advise, leaving the bedroom.

'Aye-aye, captain!'

I stop myself short of a last double take, or I know I wouldn't be strong enough to pull away from Sherlock's eccentricities. They amuse me too.

_**.**_

The electronic greeting of a phone app fills the living room with its sterile cheerfulness.

'Hey, there!'

'John, mate, how are ya?'

I sit up straighter in my chair, the awkward outstretched arm holding up my phone for the camera to fit me in the small square mirror, forcing myself to look normal and instead focus on the eager face of the more tech savvy detective inspector.

'I'm absolutely fine, Greg. How are you? Any symptoms? Have you been eating and sleeping right? How's everyone at the Yard, are they alright?'

'Whoa there, John! I'm not calling you for a doctor. I'm just checking up on you.'

'Same here.' Check mate.

'I asked first, John.'

He's getting me peeved now. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. 'I already answered, I'm fine.'

'Well, it's not just the virus that worries me. We're both busy, you've got a high pressure job right now at the hospital, while I deal with the morons who think they can flaunt the rules, and on top of that you've got Sherlock to deal with, speaking of unreasonable idiots.'

I shake my head with a smirk, knowing Greg is only too fond of the younger detective. 'You've got it wrong. Sherlock is the one keeping me going. I couldn't do what I do without his support. He keeps me motivated, he follows the rules, he distracts me when I can't wait to go out again normally and enjoy the London I miss. He's as much of a hero as I am', I declare solemnly.

'Oh no', the old inspector groans.

'What?' _Too mushy?_ I didn't expect that reaction.

Greg points behind me. I turn to look over my shoulder. Sherlock has come up to join us silently. He's leaning over the back of my chair, dressed in some pantomime warlock costume that can simultaneously offend any Wiccan and various fans of magic shows, and a plethora of film and book lovers. It's disturbing to so many folks it's almost laudable in its universality and inclusiveness.

'Sherlock?' I ask silently all the questions I can't word right now.

'What? This old thing? It's just what I wear to do the dishes', he alleges.

I glare at my friend. It might as well be a factual statement as, in fact, no one has ever seen Sherlock Holmes do the dishes.

_Because Sherlock never does the dishes._

But I'm assuming he just wants to mess with the inspector. And, true enough, Sherlock protests: 'Lestrade, I'm bored. Can you get me some better cases? Something new?'

The inspector sighs.

'I'll see what I can do', he says at last. Sherlock grins in success.

_How did I not see this coming?_

_**.**_

'That was rude, manipulative and unnecessary', I state, as Sherlock and I take our usual chairs after the video call. My flatmate is back in his normal clothes as a small saving grace. Any other time I would have walked off the flat, to cool down. The current lockdown has put a damper on my usual coping strategy.

'That was needed, creative and you are still refusing to recognise my genius, John.'

_Good grief, he said that with a straight face!_

'You're not Bafta material just because you can deceive me, Sherlock.'

'I will forgive you for your appreciation of my talents on account of your missing on some of my best performances.'

'Mate, I'm your blogger, I know it all.'

His steely eyes flutter their attention across the room. 'You've not been there all the time, John.'

'Oh, really? When was I not—' _Oh._

_When he was gone, leaving me to mourn a fake loss._

We both fall into uneasy silence after that.

I wish I had gone outside instead.

_**.**_

'Sherlock, when you were hunting down Moriarty's criminal web... did you ever—' I choke a bit and hastily look away to the fire in the hearth. Unusually frosty nights have been falling on London. Spring is arriving only by day.

'Yes, John?' he softly incentives me, a soft promise of answers – he'll answer enough – if I just ask. But asking is the hard part.

'Did you ever miss me? A mean us, this?' my words thin out as a barely audible whisper.

_**.**_

Perhaps it was an inevitable dance with destiny. How could it be otherwise? Neither Sherlock Holmes nor doctor Watson are good communicators, generally speaking. Sure, I write a blog and he has posted monologues on 243 types of ashes and how quickly 747 types of beer go flat; but real talk, about feelings in those years apart? It's unspoken consensus not to address feely things, because I still get angry (raw sentiments of betrayal and abandonment still too close to the surface) and he gets defensive ("just trying to save your life, John"). We're locked in our positions as opponents. I know I'm the one who is being ungrateful, I'm the one who must take the first step, talk about the trivial life I lead without him, so that he can tell me all about his adventures, the exciting and dangerous life he had, all I missed out.

I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for this, but 24/7 confinement to 221B (apart from my work shifts at the hospital) is about to force us to talk, express our inner feelings and recount the life events not witnessed by the other.

Either that or we take up hiding in our rooms until the end of this virus, maybe longer.

We'll talk. It only took a ruddy pandemic, endangering too many lives outside 221B, our lives too.

Sometimes, less now, I still wake up believing it's been a bad dream, the last few weeks. All the infections, the deaths, the social measures; all a weird delusion because I ate too much cheese before bedtime.

I'm quite sure some types of cheese can make me a bit paranoid.

I'm yet to find out what the other types of cheese do for me.

They sure don't put London back together again.

And so I wonder if this is a chance to catch up with undealt issues from our past.

Right now there's an elephant in the room.

_**.**_

'Well, did you? Miss us, I mean?' I dare to repeat.

Sherlock looks mildly shocked, green eyes frozen wide, trembling in their orbs. He then shrugs, jittery, almost a roll of the shoulders to pull up the ghost of a long wool coat, his usual armour with the collar flicked up. For a moment I think I won't get anything out of the emotionally stunted detective. Then he surprises me, like he always does.

'I missed you all the time, John.'

'Really?' I snap, getting shocked with my own bitterness.

'I came back, didn't I?' he snaps back.

'How do I know you had a choice?'

He smiles mysteriously to his own memories. It's a strong, confident smile that I want to scrub off his cocky face, because I was, for my own part, absolutely wallowing in grief for the loss. Sherlock quickly reigns in his smile to more acceptable standards.

Our disconnection has only deepened so far. So much for talking.

We need to dive in deeper.

'John, have you ever heard of the Baron Maupertuis?'

'Yes, naturally. It was all over the papers. Had some weird dealings, died in suspicious circumstances a few years ago. Some said he was at the centre of a colossal ring of art forgeries, others say he just lived the fast life on drugs and luxury yachts, there was even word he had command over his own private army and owned a few private islands in the Pacific... Shall I research him?' I ask, unsure where Sherlock is getting at. A new case, an exit to the failing conversation?

'No need, John. You can just ask. I was the Baron Maupertuis for the last six months of his life. Nearly cost me mine too.'

I stare hard at my friend in utter shock. Suddenly all too human, he blushes shyly and looks away.

'Yeah', I say, flatly. 'Tell me about it.'

'I will not, until you calm yourself considerably. You've got a worrying vein popping in your forehead, John. It would be unwise for me to cause you a stroke, you being the medical man in our team.'

'_Sherlock!'_ I snap, and it comes out as an old captain Watson command; thunderous and effective.

My friend's eyes sharpen, losing that touch of humanity in them.

'Be careful with what you wish for, John. I will tell you, you may not like what you hear.' He reclined back into the comfortable Bauhaus chair. 'It might take a while, John, and by the end of it you might see me differently. But I assure you I followed your counsel all throughout.'

'I wasn't in Europe.'

'The Netherlands', he specifies. 'And in a way, you were never far off. Except for a couple of days in the beginning, we all make mistakes, and you were nagging me mentally for being around drugs again, but you were definitely a constant presence by the time I had been shot and took to hiding inside the draining systems under the city.'

'_Shot?_ Sherlock, why didn't you ever tell me that?' I worry. 'Where? How serious was it?'

'Serious enough to spend several days fending off a high fever from an infection and weakness from the blood loss.'

'I should have been there', I'm sure. I feel guilty I wasn't there, when he needed me the most.

He smiles fondly, as if I just confirmed his expectations. 'Just drop it, John. I was trying to keep you safe, remember? I made you believe I was dead, because nothing less would keep you from finding me and helping me.'

'You were shot and didn't get proper medical attention!' I accuse him, angry, hurt.

'John, listen for once. You may find you were there in spirit if not in actual presence. You were certainly the reason I came out of there alive, and managed to defeat Maupertuis's men, after then pinned me for a con.'

I lean back on the worn-out upholstery of my chair.

'Tell me about it, Sherlock. We've got all the time in the world right now.'

He nods, honest green eyes locked in mine.

Perhaps there's something good in this giant Pause Button we're all being submitted to right now. There are wrongs to be righted, and old stories to be shared.

London can wait outside our windows.

I'm getting to know my best friend a bit better. Sherlock Holmes will always surprise me.

_**.**_

_**maybeTBC**_


	54. Chapter 54

_A/N: Yeah, okay, I'll give it a go. I'll try to continue that last one. I've got the head canon for ages now, might even have posted part of this plot at some point, I can't remember. It may be a bit fragmented. Don't think this is me at my best - it never really is because I'm not a born writer - so sorry about that. -csf_

* * *

_**continuation. **_

Sherlock was a tall ginger man by the time his airplane touched down in Amsterdam. Ginger worked for him, and although he missed his carefully constructed look, he knew it was time to sever the ties with the past. Systematically, gently, he was to put away his persona, like one of his carefully preserved specimens in formaldehyde.

The late Sherlock Holmes had been left sprawled on the cold pavement, mourned by a dazed John Watson who believed him dead and, for all intents and purposes, had publicly signed the best death certificate in the world. No one would dispute the faithful sidekick's account. John had that intrinsic honesty to him, that not even a good actor like the detective could successfully emulate. It had even been a nice tragic but heroic death, the fitting end to the consulting detective – up until his scheduled return that is.

Gone into secure storage (thanks to Mycroft) were the long coat and blue scarf, along with Sherlock's passport. All the former detective carried with him now were nondescript new items of clothes bought of the racks of a general clothing store. Polyester heavy, itchy and ill fitting.

_If you want to fit in with the crowds, _Mycroft had insisted, _you need to wear the same as the crowds. _In truth, it had nagged the former detective for a jiffy, but he had got over it quickly. One month, two months at the most, and he'd be back at London, and 221B, and laughing with John over the brilliant prank Sherlock had pulled on the world. This had the makings of John's best blog yet. What would an itchy tag on the back of his shirt's collar have that he couldn't bear?

_**.**_

'Sherlock, I still haven't heard anything I couldn't actually be there for.'

My sharp words hang heavily on the air between me and the detective. Back in real time, he's a brunette that came back from the dead and conquered his rightful place back at 221B. He picked up where he left of, with a few minor adjustments, from what I can tell.

I can still feel the hold of imaginary sellotape holding me together, in sharp contrast.

Sometimes I think he really knows what destruction his actions brought on me. Other times I think I'm deceiving myself.

As I listen to his callous narrative I start to wonder who is the strange man that came back as Sherlock Holmes.

'I'm not entirely sure you weren't there, in spirit, at first, John', he tells me, opening up some more. 'And surely towards the end you were priceless... Somewhere in the middle, however, I made sure you weren't with all my willpower.'

_**.**_

Sherlock scratches the scruff of his neck absently, taking up his small duffel from the overhead lockers. Rows of tired but fevered passengers cutting him off to the exit doors, hurrying into their holidays or their return home. And so the detective playing mediocre traveller takes his place on the queue, holding up his duffel bag and his fake passport.

Echoes of a fleeting thought surfaces as a haze, that he quickly quenches down. _Not now! _Yet, his own curiosity has the better of him, by trying to analyse his own subconscious drift. _No, not John. John as a soldier._

John with his army duffel and a determined gaze, facing head on the war raging outside the aircraft carrier in Kandahar. John with light blond hair to match the desert landscapes and big cobalt blue eyes carrying a steely glint to match the reflexes of the bright hot sun on his army tag and the gun that would faithfully serve him for a long time to come.

Sherlock berates himself for the thought, and how easily John still pierces the armour around the detective and his mind.

John is safe, John is in London. Sherlock is on his own. _Such as he has started, he'll now face his biggest challenge, just Sherlock Holmes against the world._

'Dank je', the travelling man greets as he passes the last flight attendant, marching along the queue of passengers to the main building.

Sherlock had spent a good flight learning the basic intricacies of the Dutch language. He had acquired some proficiency before the first turbulence and by touch down on the foreign soil he had grasped all but the understanding of the best Dutch poets. He could discourse over the navigation and astronomical advances of scientists, but poets – no, poetry will take a while longer in any language. Poetry is an agreeable and romanticized way of detailing sentiments and culture. Sherlock will keep to scientists and natural discoveries if he can.

As his new self, he must fool the locals into thinking he's one of them.

Not just any of them, ponders Sherlock as he reaches the passport control. He removes the shades and smiles daringly.

'Baron Maupertuis.'

The stern woman on the counter doesn't smile, does not engage.

And Sherlock almost glances sideways with a calculated look at John, who'd readily admonish him for his knee-jerk illusions of grandeur.

But John is not there to commiserate on the failings of Sherlock's charm as a redhead, to share a smirk that is both mocking Sherlock's smugness and the world's failing at recognising the hero at his side.

Sherlock casts his eyes on the empty floor instead.

_And he bites down that foreign feeling of a part of himself missing._

The former detective accepts the passport back with the blankest, nearly spitefully empty, expression and crosses the threshold into the next area.

Sherlock Holmes is being left behind. The Baron is emerging.

Of course, there's yet one smallish hindrance in the plan.

The real Baron Maupertuis is very much alive and taking control of his life, right now. There's already a plan, etched with Mycroft in his bunker-like office. It will involve Sherlock going beyond any proven actor capabilities so far, he suspects, but he won't back down now.

As Jim Moriarty died in that rooftop, it changed the fate for all those he left behind. Not just removed any possibility of a regular life for Sherlock, but created a bunch of revenge, hate and decay filled backup operations that will stop at nothing to annihilate the man who brought a curse to their world.

Sherlock swallows his name, and curses himself for classing this as a success, the only possible success. He has lost his beloved work, his identity, his life, and is taking over another's as penance for his shortcomings. The detective almost loses focus.

He reviews quickly his new identity as the Baron and the plan to take over someone else's life. And he walks forward, ready to claim it as his own.

_Needs must, little_ _brother_; Mycroft is quite sure this branch of Moriarty's empire can regenerate the entire threat, if not quickly contained.

_**.**_

'Mycroft, of course. Your confident', I recall, having some difficulty disguising the bitterness folded in every syllable. I pick at the fraying threads on the chair's arm, revealing the uneven padding underneath.

Sherlock nods in quiet constriction. He has long learnt he can only listen as I vent my frustration and anger and hurt. Anything he may say will be, by default, too little too late.

He offers me the chance to take deep breaths, to prevent me saying something we'll both regret.

'Yes, my brother provided me with an overall plan, John', he says at last.

I think I read something into that remark, but right now, sitting in opposite armchairs there's a large chasm between us. The size of London to Amsterdam in the least.

'Did he meet up with you soon after?'

Sherlock's grey eyes squint. 'Mycroft doesn't do fieldwork, John. It would be long before he and I met up again. I was in Serbia by then.'

'How supportive of big brother.'

Sherlock smirks as he recognises my lapse into the same old friend who takes his side in any scuffle.

'Besides, I had him watch over you here in London.'

'Hmm', I state noncommittally.

_**.**_

Somewhere on the outskirts of Amsterdam, a first class train compartment encased a man of exquisite and expensive rates, perfect enhanced physique, and immoral behaviour. He is the real Baron Maupertuis, an affected dandy with red hair and long thin limbs, surrounded by a cohort of partying easy women and men, who fawn at his every joke, smile grotesquely at each winning gesture or grovel for a touch more chemical happiness. They are wild and untouchable hedonists at their better and worse.

The Baron is young, wild and holds no real regard for his position or wealth, so he gives the entourage all beyond their wildest dreams. As long as they amuse him they can gave their share. It's an unspoken arrangement.

The garish party reveller holds himself up as the train grinds to a halt at the station. He almost trips over two of his companions, whose names he can't quite recall, obscenely making out on the worn upholstery seat. Annoyed, he yanks by the long hair the woman's head from his way to the window, ignoring as she yelps. South station. Nearly there. Forty more minutes or so to cross the city centre.

He looks down on the woman whose hair is still fisted in his grasp and he yanks her his way. Her eyes dilate in fear one second, the next they become docile as he beckons her with a few more grams of indulgence. She smiles, a lopsided smile that has no more innocence in it, devouring her price. The forlorn partner tries to protest. The Baron rolls his eyes and yanks a thin blade from his pocket, jabbing the man fatally and twisting the handle. The man falls, eyes glassy as he hits the compartment's ground already dead. The Baron turns to the other men and women crammed in the tight space. Some laugh, most applaud; live is meaningless there as an artistic expression of nihilism.

The Baron takes a quiet seat for the end of his journey, kicking away the dead man's body on the floor.

_**.**_

'Wait, Sherlock, how do you know what happened inside the train compartment? You weren't there.'

My old friend reminds me, wistfully: 'I am a detective, John. I investigate murders. I can surmise how a victim died in suspicious circumstances and interrogate witnesses.'

'And the real Baron just left the train with the murdered body behind?'

'Yes. As it turned out the real Baron was afraid of flying. A bit of an inference there, but to all accounts, he would always choose land of water travelling ways. As it were, it was not the first murder he committed on a train either. But, alas, he was never prosecuted.'

'The dutch police was in on it, protecting him?'

'Oh no. Not at all. They couldn't accuse him, though. Diplomatic immunity. The Baron was not native to The Netherlands, but international diplomacy had him treated as their own royalty.'

'Surely—'

'John, you asked me for my story. Will you let me tell it?'

'By all means, carry on. We've established he was a creepy horrible guy. Perhaps we can sanitise the gory details a bit from now on? I'm not sure I'll hold that curry in long if you keep at it.'

'John, you were a soldier', he reminds me, pointedly.

'Yeah, well, I didn't fight after a full curry, did I?' I defend myself. 'You could have had a bit more yourself so I wouldn't have had to finish it off, because I sure wasn't storing it next to the pickled liver in our fridge and you know that!'

He smiles softly. 'Sure, John.'

For a moment his eyes look forlorn, as if he had missed our banter the most.

_**.**_

Across Amsterdam two ginger men compete to arrive at a luxury penthouse in the heart of the city. The totality of the top floor of a magnificent hotel is the rented home of the Baron Maupertuis. Sherlock arrives first, after being allowed in through the hotel reception by the simple expedient of looking and acting like he belongs there. He walks the hotel hall, directing boxes and rolling hangers full of designer clothes; a mad succession of fashion on Mycroft's credit card.

No matter how much Sherlock has used prosthetics to alter his nose, and dye for his hair, he's sure he can't fill another man's custom made wardrobe with his actor skills alone.

'Will you open the penthouse for me?' he snaps at the worrying concierge.

'It is open. There's no key, monsieur.'

Ah, French. Sherlock bites his tongue not to revert naturally to the man's native tongue, that he misses from his childhood. Now is not the time, as he is not himself.

'Right, this is _Amsterdam_, my bad! I'll just go up then.'

Work harder, Sherlock. Not nearly in character enough. Sure enough he's asked:

'Monsieur le Baron, are you alright?'

Sherlock hesitates, brain whirling in desperation to be a convincing fraud. Before he can speak, another voice assures:

'Concierge, my son is a busy man, enough with this absurd nonsense!'

They both turn to the private lift. A mature and imposing woman comes out of the lift, liquid mercurial eyes flashing over Sherlock, measuring him.

If she's the Baron's mother, how can she not know Sherlock is not her son?

Maybe it amuses her, Sherlock considers as he sees that flinty light in her eyes matched up by a cold smile. 'Come, I was feeling lonely', she leads him.

The concierge is all apologies, the suits are being packed into another, service, lift, and Sherlock has a split second decision to pull out or join the trap willingly. He does the latter.

_"Careful, mate!"_

_"Not now, John!"_

_"I really wouldn't trust her."_

_"I don't simply trust, John."_

_"Too femme fatale for me."_

_"Women are your area, John."_

_"And killers are yours, Sherlock."_

The ginger detective rides the private lift all the way up to the last floor with this strange woman, wondering if she's an ally, or if she's the spider at the centre of the web, luring him in.

_**.**_

'Hang in there, I'm just going to get a refill on the tea situation, mate.'

'John, you can't just... _Pause_ me!' Sherlock is hardly reasonable, all bothered because I got up from my chair.

'Hold your horses, I didn't say I wasn't going to listen to the rest. I just need... some tea.'

'Oh.'

'_Oh-what?'_

'You are uncomfortable, and I don't allude to the broken springs on your chair. My story is making you uncomfortable. But why? I haven't broken your morale rules yet.'

'Apart from lying to someone's mother that you were her child?'

'That's alright, I soon discovered she wasn't her real mother either. But she had been there as he grew up. A housekeeper, nearly a wet nanny, and he kept her around either for sentiment or because she alone could unmask huge secrets of his present life and his origins.'

I drop the kettle, stunned.

'Alright, you need to start picking up the pace now.'

'I can do that.'

_**.**_

'Who are you, stranger?'

Her words melt in the crossed winds of the wide balcony over the city's commercial district. Her poise is elegant and dignified as an old heroine from the Greek legends, but her face is marred by lines of worry and self-recrimination. She is the time immemorial witness for the Baron. She was there in the beginning and she will be there in the end.

Sherlock focuses on a small buzzing insect in a pink flower growing dejectedly in an old pot. He anchors himself in that tiny working bee, in that battered geranium, in that indomitable sign of strength in a harsh world.

'I'm this East wind that surrounds us. I'm here to do what needs to be done.'

She stills and faces the stone balcony and the city beyond.

'Moriarty sent you? To take my son's place?'

'He's not your son.'

'There would have been a time I would have disputed that with my dying breath. But now the ties that bond us have been tainted by his actions. I can no longer forgive him. You are right, I'm not his mother. A mother would always forgive.'

'Then help me', Sherlock dares to expose himself as the obvious lie, vehemence in his every word.

She shakes her head. 'I cannot.'

They hear noises coming from the flat.

She hurries to huskily tell him: 'Do it quickly and you have my blessing.'

But Sherlock hesitates. How can Sherlock kill a man cold-blooded in front of family?

_"Told you._

_Go back to London, Sherlock._

_You can still have Baker Street._

_There must be some other way."_

Sherlock takes the gun she hastily hands him over. One professional glance and he knows it's loaded and carefully maintained.

_"That's dangerous gear, mate."_

_"Shut up, John!"_

_"Hey, what did I do?"_

_"You're a soldier, you tell me what to do!"_

Sherlock's hands are trembling, a sheen of cold sweat covers his face.

_"No, you're not like this, Sherlock."_

_"You're wrong. I am like this. I'm not a hero. I could never be one."_

Sherlock raises his gun to the half inebriated ginger man stumbling into the sofa just the other side of the double doors. He paces forward quietly, gun in hand, hesitating to shoot a man from behind, but stealth is a powerful weapon.

_"I won't watch this, Sherlock."_

The detective bends closer to the man collapsed on the leather cushions. One closer look and he knows the heart has stopped pumping blood, the brain has ceased firing synapses, the Baron is no more.

Long live the Baron.

_"John?_

_John! Where are you?"_

Only silence after his every call.

He's lost his innocence, and John too now.

_**.**_

'So you killed him?'

'You mean "murdered".'

'Don't get technical with me. Not now. Please.'

'No, John, I didn't. Not me.'

I scan him desperately, mindful that Sherlock can deceive me easily. But I haven't been bumped on the head, there are no big magic tricks, just words, that he can twist to his advantage one moment and confess the truth in the next.

I believe he's telling me the truth.

'And you were just going to leave that part out? What kind of story teller are you?'

Sherlock smirks fondly to his blogger.

'She did it. His old housekeeper. She swiftly took the gun from my hands as I hesitated too long. She fired it as he lay near comatose on the sofa. She enacted my decision in a second, the one I took 60 seconds to psyche myself into and failed. Little did I know that it was little comfort that she was the one pulling the trigger. I was to carry that deed as mine for a long time to come.'

'What do you mean?'

'The shot was heard in the other floors. The police was called and on their way. She was frantic with grief, loss and panic. I couldn't let her face the action she had taken for me, for the world. So we made a pact. I would get rid of the body and she would confirm the Baron was alive and well and that the Baron was me... I had unwillingly found myself an accomplice to a murder I had failed to carry out properly.'

I cross my arms in front of me.

'No, Sherlock. You found yourself a new sidekick. You have a penchant for sidekicks who kill for you on the day they meet you, don't you?'

Sherlock blinks, hysterically mind blown.

I roll my eyes and sit back waiting for him to recover.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	55. Chapter 55

_A/N: Technically, it's the continuation of the continuation. I'll wrap it up in the next one, I think. -csf._

* * *

_**continuation.**_

'And so Sherlock Holmes became the infamous Baron Maupertuis.'

I shake my head, bewildered. 'It's like a bad take on "what did you do over the summer holidays", isn't it? "Who me? I ran a worldwide criminal web for a friend, and you?" Oh, Sherlock...'

'Sarcasm, John', he warns.

'Yes, yes it was', I retort.

Sherlock's face hardens as he scrutinises me over united fingertips of his long slender fingers. Finally he tilts his head.

'You are troubled, John. Long before the sterner parts of my narrative. I wonder if you can stand to listen to the rest of it.'

I set my jaw and glare at the detective. 'Mate, really? Think I'm a sensitive wallflower? Bring it on. Posh private school boy goes on mad gap year abroad and he's missing home, that's all I heard so far.'

His eyes turn mercurial cold as he pins me to my seat with rightful anger.

'That's not actually very different from how you reacted in my mind, John. I am all too aware that my imagination re-enacted you quite accurately.'

'What do you mean?' I question him with a dead weight weighing on my stomach.

'You loathed me, John. Because I stood and watched a man die, a man I was ready to kill myself, but gratefully I let someone else take the burden. I trusted her. It came at a price. She knew my secret, she could expose me as a fraud and destroy me in a second. My life in her hands. I also let her protect me. Guide me in Maupertuis's organisation.'

'I thought you were meant to bring it down.'

'I was. But I realised I hadn't gone high enough. Maupertuis was a puppet to some new master. I had to lay low, live the Baron's life, and identify the target to destroy.'

I smirk and shake my head. 'Right. I see. You were coerced to a life of luxury and crime away from London.'

'In a way, yes', he agrees, strangely subdued. 'I didn't choose. Could have been a spell among Tibetan monks or a fortnight pegged by jury duty in Germany. Not a choice I made. I went where the ultimate case lead me', he insists. Just before he smirks. 'But I did get my tailored suits back for a while there.'

'Yeah. Bet that made it up for any inconvenience.'

'Sarcasm, John.'

'Yes, Sherlock. Right again.'

He decides to avoid conflict, by elaborating some more: 'And while it lasted Moriarty was winning. He had corrupted me. Turned me to the dark side. In order to save you, London and bring down the last of a criminal network that could infect and destroy the world, I had to be Moriarty's pawn. Take the Baron's place. Little could I do. I sent mercenaries to the wrong locations, sparing targets in the police and parliament a couple of times. I pressured a few lone soldiers to give up their trade. I bought a shipment load of ammunition and had the warehouse destroyed by arson overnight. With every little action I tied the Baron's hands around the smoking gun. But that wasn't enough. I was living inside the circle of trusted criminals. In order to keep the Baron sabotaging their plans, I had to keep their trust, go to the needed extremes.'

'Go on', I whisper.

He shrugs, looks away, blanks his face as if he was discussing toothpaste brands.

'Drugs, alcohol, anything that would numb me to better perform the part.'

I get up. Upset, angry, spinning thoughts in my head like daggers. I spin to turn to him as if I could hit him with the wind whiplash. He reacts all the same, reconciling slightly.

'You don't get to do this, Sherlock!' I yell at him, forgetting how pointless it is to argue over events of the past. 'You don't get to act like what you were going through gave you carte blanche to destroy yourself! Nothing ever gives you the right to destroy who your friends and family love. Nothing, do you hear me? Nothing.'

'No', he agrees, gravely. 'You tried to tell me as much. So I muted you.'

I stop my wild gesturing and pacing the room. Sherlock is immobile, a hateful picture of calm and control as he throws me into a nosedive tailspin.

'Muted me?' _Oh, that's grand, real grand!_

A small smile fleetingly settles on his lips as he ponders me. 'More like mentally kidnapped you and kept you hostage in some dark corner of my mind, where your influence could no longer judge me – nor guide me.'

I dive on my chair, deflated. 'Is that how you see me? Your bloody conscience? Is that what I am to you?'

Sherlock acts aloof. 'In my mind you were more of a boring moralist, I suppose. I was yet to find out how we are so quick to appoint to others the flaws we find in ourselves, and if we turn away those who most want to help is so they don't see our own shortcomings. John. You had strong opinions on the Baron's lifestyle. I see now they were but my own objections projected onto your memory. In the end I pushed goodie-two-shoes intentions away. There was immediate recompense. I enjoyed it as a coming of age, a gap year to be wild and free as you said. I nearly lost myself. Somewhere in the process you became a fond memory, a closed chapter in my life.'

'Is that why you never got in touch with me? One simple message would have changed _everything_.'

'At first, yes. You weren't kind over my choices in my mind, how could I expect differently with the real you? Facing you would have made my resolve falter. I needed to keep you locked away.'

'But you came back all the same', I whisper. _He did_, _he's here now. _'What changed you? What opened your eyes in the end?'

'I was betrayed by the only one I gave my trust to.' He smiles fondly at me. 'I learned not everyone can be my blogger.'

_**.**_

In order to be the Baron, Sherlock Holmes had to live like the Baron. It was hardly the time for a lifestyle change without drawing more attention to himself. And the endless party revelling was not wholly disagreeable, for it should be said Sherlock Holmes never drew a line at the type of companions he would keep. One minute surrounded by royalty when summoned to Buckingham, the next playing cards with the homeless under the London bridge.

When Sherlock found himself surrounded by petty criminals and hardened mercenaries, it only tickled his amusement, that he could so flawlessly fit in there too.

Before he knew it, the status quo would change yet again.

It had been a chilly autumnal day and the trees were shedding their last leaves, bowing to the upcoming winter.

_When had it become day? What day was it?_

Sherlock stumbles into the penthouse floor right out of the private lift, feeling a bit stiff in his legs, his back, his brain.

'Mother, I'm home!' he says, chuckling at his own joke.

The imperturbable cougar lady walks calmly out of the bedroom, a gun trailed on her fingers, and an incongruous party dress hugging her figure. She doesn't smile, not in the least when she holds up the early edition newspaper.

'What have you done?' she demands, cold.

He hiccups, blaming his state while she's so clearly... upset. Why is she upset? Did she find out about the diverted ammunition cargo in Gaza or the returned Vermeer in Florence? Unless Sherlock messed up and delivered the Vermeer to Gaza. Sherlock really hopes he was more sobered up than he is now.

'I need a lie down', he whines, bypassing the armed woman. Serious mistake, turning his back like that, but he trusts her too much.

'Who's this?' he asks, suddenly sobered up as he sees a tall ginger bloke coming in from the terrace double doors. Even now, just like a child, he's asking her to explain. Trusting her to make sense of the plot twist for him.

'He's you', she answers. Calm, cold, implacable.

'_Me_? I'm me, so he can't be _me_. I'm better looking than _me_! You can't replace me, I'm the Baron!' It comes out as a rant, and by golly, Sherlock means every word of it.

'No', the newcomer states coolly, a snarling smirk as he watches the state of the wreck of a man in front of him. _The man who defeat Moriarty had ultimately defeated himself_. 'You're not the Baron Maupertuis. I should know, I put the Baron in charge at Jim's request. You are not him.'

"_Jim, Jim Moriarty? Hiii!"_

Sherlock had just hit the jackpot. Unluckily for him, he wasn't as fully sober for this as he should have been.

The detective steps back reflexively, unable to contain his reactions as he normally would. He grabs his own hair and shakes his head, trying hard to focus, to reason, to be Sherlock Holmes.

To be who he has denied himself to be.

'I know you! You're Moran, dear departed Jim's BFF!'

_Err, maybe he shouldn't have said that out loud._

Triggered, the tall blond burly man grabs Sherlock by the collar and easily tosses him across the room. Glass and crystals shatter along the way and Sherlock needs to shield his face to keep it safe. He's therefore still a bit stunned, a bit inattentive, when the burly man grabs him again and tosses him through the glass double doors. Sherlock rolls like a rag doll on the balcony, glass smithereens bouncing about in showered shards.

With one look over his shoulder the fake ginger looks the blond coronel straight in the eyes, before he leaps up and jumps off the balcony, five storeys high over Amsterdam's streets.

_**.**_

'You jumped off a balcony with your head clouded by drugs?' I surmise, stunned.

Sherlock seems to ponder the logic for the first time. 'Perhaps because of it', he admits quietly. 'Also because of one of the most dangerous men alive having me again at gun point.'

'Yeah, about that. He had a gun. Why not just shoot from the start?'

'Moran's a sadist. He enjoyed every bit the fear and pain he saw in me. Ultimately that gave me a break to run.'

'Jump a balcony, you mean.'

'Exactly. And John, if you'd care to stop interrupting me...'

_**.**_

Sherlock is climbing down the side of the building when the first bullets zoom past him. He's much too hyped up in his own adrenaline to take them seriously. Fluid moves trail him down the rope to a dark alleyway, it could almost feel like a different lifetime.

He recognises he hasn't been so much of himself as this for a long time. He's grateful he set up a long rope from the balcony as an emergency escape plan, back when he was still himself.

The hot searing pain that spears Sherlock is both a surprising painful hell and a kick to the system. His hands slide on the coarse rope, his heart skips a beat, and suddenly he's falling.

_Estimate height, tree meters ten. This is going to hurt further._

He hits the concrete with his back, and it sags the breath out of him.

Sherlock dares to blink through the pain and shock to the balcony above. He can see shapes fleeing in pursuit. They will take the stairs, they will be upon him in less than a three minutes. _Estimate, two minutes and fifty seconds._

Sherlock's breath rattles as he tries to gather all his strengths to fight off the killers, to run down the alley to the anonymous city. He almost loses consciousness just from trying to sit up.

In his mid section a deep scarlet stain spreads ominously.

Is this it, then? The end?

Sherlock Holmes as a dead body in one of those filthy crime scene alleys that the detective explored so many times before?

Dying alone, such as he lived?

"_Sherlock."_

The detective feels immense relief and warmth around his heart. Possibly the side effect of a mild concussion, but beggars can't be choosers. It is oddly touching that John _–_ his faithful friend_ – _ would return in Sherlock's time of need.

'John? Is that you? Can't be you. It's Thursday, Lestrade has you going out for bowling on Thursdays. It is Thursday, right?'

"_Sherlock, focus! I need you to focus. Put pressure on that wound – now."_

'John, it's bad.' In a split second lucidity Sherlock realises he's bleeding out in Amsterdam.

"_Back in hell, are we? Good, Sherlock. Focus, mate. Stay with me. I know it hurts and I know it's scary as shit, Sherlock, just listen to me. You're going to be alright. But first— you need to get out of here. Too exposed. Three doors, upper flank window, you could be in Piccadilly Square and it'd be all the same."_

'I can't walk', the detective hisses in the presumably empty alley.

"_You don't have to", John promises him, eyes full of admiration and care. The same John that Sherlock can still tune in so easily as if a part of himself. A part he realises now he has never left behind, he couldn't bear to do that. "Luckily, mate, I'm as clever as you are inside your head. Come, I'll help."_

Sherlock rolls over and starts dragging his tense, raging pain, body along. 'You can't really help, you're not really here.'

"_No shit, Sherlock. Did you work that out on your own or did I feed you that deduction?" John's confident smile is Sherlock's chosen lifeline, to which the detective grabs on tight._

_**.**_

'How did you manage to escape the alley before the shooters came down for you?'

'I didn't exactly leave the alley. I wouldn't have made it as far. Following your instructions, I dislodged the lid to a manhole, courtesy of the water company, plain centre in the alley. I managed to replace the lid just in time. I hid in a stale shaft, damp and manly, as I heard the searches being done on the street level for ages. Throughout I was nearly powerless as I tried to stop the blood loss. You, John, you kept telling me to keep pressure on the wound, to take deep breaths, that I was going to make it. I kept telling you to be silent, and you'd remind me that you weren't really there. My logic, my mind, was hard to make sense in my lancinating pain addled world. Your presence alone kept me sane, John.'

Back against the armchair, I'm trying to remember to breathe. I almost lost Sherlock. Again.

'I don't think I ever asked your conjured self in that alley to forgive me for pushing you away. I knew my John Watson. He forgave me anyway. Sarcasm filled and foul mouthed as I remembered him.'

'Sherlock...'

'And how did you spend your free time here in London, John?'

_**.**_

_**TBC **_


	56. Chapter 56

_A/N: Last continuation (finally)._

_Keep safe and keep strong. We can do this. -csf_

* * *

_**continuation's end.**_

A soft blush befalls Sherlock's face as he coyly raises his shirts for my inspection. I've knelt by his armchair, transfixed in the vast plains of muscle and pale skin, and an abated red extension of a scar. It feels wrong to see that flawless skin marred by violence, a price to pay for the daring act of a man trying to shut down a ring of crime. I reach tentative fingertips, causing him some goose bumps, but I insist, checking the healing, guessing the infection that once took hold of the man, and the trajectory of a stray bullet that miraculously missed main organs and vital paths. As a physician I know there are not many paths a bullet can cross a human torso without producing death if no immediate medical attention is sought. This imaginary pathway I sense under my fingertips is one of the few that would give Sherlock a fighting chance. A cold shiver runs down my back as if death itself, escaping the lucky detective, had brushed me as it escaped the room.

'You can see I wasn't lying, John.'

'I never said I thought you were', I reply, confused.

'Why not? Given that I have been recounting a tale of lies and cons? No big leap.'

I look at those grey and green eyes, so crystalline tonight.

'I have the right to indignation, Sherlock. Doesn't mean I don't still trust I know who you are. I know you, Sherlock.'

He presses his lips and still defends, as if he not heard a word I said: 'No bone damage from the gun kicking forward as the detonation left the chamber, no ponder burns scars around the wound site. It wasn't self inflicted, nor was I shot at close range. It's all consistent with my story.'

'I know', I whisper, starting to see why he tells me.

'Good', he asserts. 'Because as I hid, assaulted by high fever, down in the city drains, I wasn't too sure of that myself for one occasion or two.'

'Gosh, Sherlock.'

'Luckily I'm a great detective. I can deduce even in my reduced state.'

'Was that when I... came back?'

'Yes, John. I knew you'd come. You always do.' He smiles tightly at that.

_**.**_

'Go away!'

The cowering injured detective shouts almost incoherent in the darkness of the quiet sewers under the city. He has dragged himself to a quieter alcove and gathered his limbs close against his torso, trying to close ranks against the inexplicable pain exploding from within him, shredding him to pieces.

'Go away, I told you to go, can't you listen for once? I've no need for you! Go away!'

"_Could have fooled me, mate. One look at you and anyone would say you needed a doctor, but how would I know? I'm just the only doctor you ever trusted, and still you pushed me away."_

'Now is not really the time for chastisement and reconciliation, John', the hurt man heaped on the floor snarls.

_John's ghostly imprint sarcastically glances at his wristwatch. "You sure? I think you have a few minutes to spare before you bleed to death without my help..."_

Sherlock growls in the damp dark tunnels under a city. 'Stop it!'

"_Who'd figure I'm even more demanding in your mind than in real life?" John ponders, still at sarcasm high._

Seems Sherlock's mind can only fetch _this_ _John_. As if he knew, from instinct, that the real John would feel hurt, betrayed, and would lash out in short tempered passive aggressive comments. The bleeding detective has to recognise, for the first time in a long time, if not ever, that he both really needs John Watson and that he's hurt his friend the most grievous way possible.

Those are two realisations that leave a bad taste in his mouth, alongside the ferric tinge of blood from a cut lip.

'John, help me', the detective's words echo in the empty chambers.

"_Why should I?"_

'Because I'm sorry. You deserve me to tell you that much, hence you need to keep me alive so that we can still meet again.'

_John's apparition sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in a familiar gesture._

"_Still haven't got it, have you? I will always help you, Sherlock, no matter what. That's what friends do."_

Sherlock smiles through a grimace. 'Quite right, John. Quite right.'

This is the doctor he knows best, as a missing half of himself.

"_Now keep going. You can't rest yet. If you stop now for a short sit down, you won't be able to get back on your feet. Trust me, I know it hurts real bad right now, but you just follow me. We are on our way to a pharmacy. There you'll put your lock picking skills to the test. We can stock up on proper bandages, antiseptic and painkillers. I can tell you what to do. This way, Sherlock, we're not far now."_

Soldier John is present and accounted for as well, Sherlock notes with interest.

'How would you know? You've never been to Amsterdam!'

"_I'm taking over your big brain, mate, and you read a magazine on the plane here. Gosh, you're brilliant, recalling all the topography of the city centre from one pic in a glossy magazine!"_

'You can't take over my brain!'

"_Mate, you're hallucinating me here. I think you've lost that battle a long while back. Just keep going, you're doing great. Do you trust me?"_

Sherlock huffs loudly.

For someone taking over his vision and decisions, John can still be obtuse as ever if he needs asking that.

'With my life, John Watson.'

_**.**_

'What are you thinking of, John? That forehead wrinkle lodged over your brow, I can't decipher it.'

I fake a smile in the safety of Baker Street's living room and diverge his attention:

'So in order to save you from a life of crime I led you to commit a smaller crime, the theft of a pharmacy?'

'In order to save a life. My life. Yes, you'd do that yourself.'

_True_, I ponder, but no need to stroke the git's big ego. Not at a time when we're both safe in 221B, reminiscing on the past.

'How long did you remain in hiding then?'

Sherlock studiedly shrugs. 'Two, three days. I started succumbing to a minor infection and had to seek proper medical attention. Mycroft helped me with all the instructions, direct from the mouth of a trusted physician... You're not to be blamed for that infection, John. It was true I was hiding in the city's sewer system, very foul and unsalable. Thanks to you I had already acquired the right medication for such complication.'

I shuffle my stance in the armchair, suddenly too hard for me to sit and listen.

'Did you steal from restaurants too?'

'Baby food', he tells me in all seriousness. 'Pharmacies will sell those baby food jars. Carrot and sweet potato mash is still my favourite... I didn't risk surfacing too fast, not until the trap I had laid Moran paid off. And it did, not a moment too soon.'

'Wait, I thought you didn't know Moran would show up.'

'I didn't. It was a self-destruct clause I had put in the Maupertuis family business. As it happened, I ended up there to watch the whole thing, John.'

_**.**_

The cool crystalline waters of the North Sea coast undulate peacefully under the striking winds. A luxury yacht stands out in his immaculate white streamlines. The local fisherman pottering about at a safe distance cannot begin to imagine this boat is the world's epicentre of master criminals at a work retreat. _Jim Moriarty's style._

Sherlock has just made it on-board and he's cautiously walking the starboard deck, ducking from view when two arms dealers from Kuwait turn a corner, hiding his face as a slim woman – the Chelsea Strangler – walks wobbly after her third prosecco bottle.

After several near misses he slithers inside the pilot's cabin, finding it empty. He takes a deeper breath and asks himself for the last time: _are you sure of this?_

For John, he is. To keep him safe in 221B.

_**.**_

Sherlock starred hard at the gridlocked commands on the yacht's cabin. _Operation Titanic. _Full steam ahead, propelling a yacht load of the worse specimens of mankind, all sickle claws and deadly venom under the silk smooth exterior of business men, philanthropists and artists. All, without exception, Moriarty's loyal henchmen. From the cabin crew to the dazzling socialite in a skimpy outfit, from the burly boxer to the four Michelin starred chef catering for the gathering in honour of the late _dear_ _Jim_, all wallowing in their success against mankind.

Not if Sherlock Holmes (and John Watson) had anything to say about it.

The detective planted a small explosive device over the commands, strapping it tight to the locked direction engine. Semtex – how appropriate, dear Jim was a romantic deep inside – and a timer built out of a wristwatch, copper wires and chewing gum. Estimated detonation time on impact against the hard jagged rocks of coastal Holland.

With trembling, numb cold fingers, Sherlock activates the bomb.

How fitting, the first fake Baron Maupertuis was about to blow them all up in smithereens.

A noise startled Sherlock suddenly. Jolted, he turned around to face his opponent.

He derided his ow surprise. Moran, of course.

'There's nothing you can do, Moran. It's over.'

"_What? Sherlock, there bloody well is something he can do. He can rip the bomb off the steering wheel and chuck it overboard!"_

_Sherlock nearly rolled his eyes; not now, John. Don't think too loud, John, he mustn't hear you._

"_Sherlock, I'm your private hallucination, no way I'm going in his head, I've got standards, you know?"_

'I'm pointing a gun at you, Holmes.'

'Yes, I can see that. No points for stating the obvious; back to me. You recognised me. You know who I am. Who else knows?'

'Just us', the tall blond with the ginger hair dye shrugs. 'I'm closing an important arms deal with a foreign dictator, don't want to spook him. Foreign dictators are so fickle. Any small ghost from the past will freak them out.'

Sherlock's eyes glance down on the commands of the speeding boat. Thirty seconds to impact and detonation. Unless he sets them off beforehand. But no, not sure he would take out all the evil in the boat.

'Be a sports, turn that off, will ya?' Moran drawls.

'No real incentive, you're going to kill me anyway', the detective retorts.

'I can make it painless for you.'

'Sorry, I'll take the wild card instead.'

Moran's cold eyes are intrigued, just before a female shape rapidly moves up from behind him, hitting him in the head with a fire extinguisher.

Sherlock immediately turns and hacks at the locked controls. Twenty seconds. _He can't stop it now!_

'You've got to leave the boat, I've set it up for self-destruction, the only way I could take out Maupertuis'a legacy...'

Before he can hatch a plan in his speed-of-light brain, a sharp pain hits his head from behind. He collapses over the jammed controls.

_**.**_

'I take it didn't explode, Sherlock, your homemade bomb.'

'It did, John.'

'You bloody well are not a ghost, mate.'

He matches my unsure smile.

'I woke up drifting in a dingy. Nearby a huge ball of hellfire consumed the remnants of the yacht. I don't believe there were any other survivors.'

'She saved you?' I'm surprised.

'She dragged me to a lifeboat before the explosion. Luckily it was just outside the cabin. She pressed the automatic release button in the nick of time.'

'She didn't join you.'

His eyes darken like thick clouds.

'Not my choice, John.'

'No way that happened in under twenty seconds, Sherlock.'

'No. She must have unlocked the timer and added enough time to set me free. Maybe she planned on saving herself as well. Her actions tell of repent and atonement. That bomb, however, was not built for remote detonation. All I know is that she made a choice. She saved me. I suppose there were a couple of nights where I played Scheherazade on the violin for her in that hotel penthouse over Amsterdam, some nights when I let myself be my true self, and in some wordless level we connected.'

I nod, gravely. I know he still blames himself for the outcome. I know this blame is why he wouldn't tell me the story. It's why he delayed reaching out to me and embarked on the next life threatening mission. Guilt is a terrible weight.

I don't blame him, though. I see she made her choice. In time he will see it too.

And I'm thankful I got him back.

_**.**_

'Mycroft, I have closed the Baron's ring in a colossal ball of hellfire. The papers have run with the wildest speculations over the affair and my hair is currently being expertly dyed a tedious shade of brown. I have received your nose and ears prosthetics, along with the next fake passport and mission.'

Mycroft's disembodied voice is marred by poor electronics of a disposable phone:

"How very productive, little brother. How about you pick up the pace a little? London won't wait forever, you know?"

'No, you're wrong. I know London will never change.'

_**.**_

'So that was my first gap year, John!' Sherlock proclaims with a goofy, please-love-me, smile. 'How was yours?'

I blink, stunned by the sudden change of focus.

'Dark, really dark. I had watched my best mate kill himself. That does things to you.'

Sherlock gulps.

'Mycroft was meant to intervene.'

'I suppose he did', I acquiesce, simulating uninterested detachment. 'He offered me cases. Medical cases. He was most insistent I helped him doctor from afar with some operatives he had on foreign missions. _A bit like the war, without the war,_ he said. Cases of spies – what else to call them – under enemy lines getting ran over by a car, burnt in an explosion, or shot and falling from a height of approximately eight feet.'

Sherlock blinks, sheepishly, but soon blurs out a correction, incapable of holding back:

'Of those three, only one was me.'

'Yeah. Shame that.'

He looks like I've just slapped him and hastily I go over my chosen words.

'No, not like that! I mean... if I had known there who I was doctoring from afar (among others), that you were alive, I would have been grateful. Pissed off and grateful you were alive.'

Sherlock nods, gravelly. 'Mycroft wouldn't have it, you know him. Always the mother hen. What if you were indiscreet? No, John, he was trying to protect me. As I was still trying to protect you.'

'Mate, you were afraid I'd kick your backside for being alive.'

He smirks easily. 'At some point, I decided I could only return properly, when I had rounded all of Moriarty's operationals, and extinguished the many arms of his organisation. I carried you with me – the memory of our friendship – and never again did I push it far from my mind. John, I will attribute to you the saving of my life in Amsterdam. Thank you... Unfortunately, it's not one of my successes you can blog about.'

I nod, slowly.

'I forgive you, Sherlock. I have forgiven you already, many, many times over. But I appreciate you telling me how it was for you.'

'Happy it wasn't just a merry-go-round?'

'Yeah, in a way', I admit. 'Although I wouldn't have you hurt that much. I'm not perfect, you know.'

'Neither am I, but I suspect you knew that already.'

I huff, amused. 'You're my hero, Sherlock. Mull that one over in that big brain of yours.'

He hastily looks away, a bit emotional under the several layers of constructed self-control. He reaches for his violin, takes a long breath, and embarks on Scheherezade.

I had never heard him play that tune in Baker Street before.

_**.**_


	57. Chapter 57

_A/N: As this lockdown situation prolongs itself we are becoming accustomed and, at the same time, the more restless. I believe a little craziness will get us through. Keep safe and keep being strong. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'Sherlock, have you seen my work ID? I'm trying to get my stuff together before tomorrow as my shift is really early and—' I stop short at the sight of the engaged detective. Immobile, with cat-like eyes staring after me, sizing me up. 'You took them.' It's neither a question nor an accusation. It's a statement of fact.

'Yes', he agrees just as quietly. 'We didn't have chocolate eggs.'

'What?'

'Easter eggs hunt, John. Thought it would amuse you.'

'Easter was days ago!'

He shrugs. 'Was it? Let's face it, since most humanity has been quarantined in one form or another, we all lost track of time anyway.'

I groan and sigh at the same time. It's sort of a doctor Watson's speciality.

'What else did you hide around the flat, Sherlock?'

'Your wallet, oyster card, lucky condom (it's out of date, John!) and keys. All very predictable, John, by the way. The keys are the real highlight of the hunt, as you'll guess, for without them you can't be liberated from 221B.'

'What do you mean? We always keep our bloody door open in case clients show up!' I point behind me. 'It's open right now.'

He cranes his neck to look behind me. 'Oh', he acknowledges with some surprise. '221's front door downstairs, then. Mrs Hudson locks it.'

'Right.'

'John, does that mean you sleep outside our flat?'

I stop short. 'Technically, yeah, I suppose. But we're not fitting another door on the landing, are we?'

'It's incongruous, John, I don't like it. I'd much prefer you'd move your stuff downstairs.'

'Where to? There's only the one bedroom!'

'How many do you need?'

He's already distracted, I can tell, as he dismissively waves me off. I sigh. No wonder the bloody rumours never die down. Sherlock feeds the trolls by the spoon full.

Right. I rub my face as I try to wake myself up some more. Sherlock just took my work ID, wallet, oyster card and keys, and hid them all somewhere inside 221B as a treasure hunt, the escape room variety. I slowly break into a good humoured chuckle.

I could blame the lockdown, but Sherlock has always been the eccentric flatmate with no sense of private property.

I surmise to double-check:

'No destruction of property, including but not limited to, shredding, melting and dyeing. No permanent defacing of my picture on the ID or demagnetising of my credit cards. No covering with toxic substances, no sub-culturing with toxic moulds, and no dipping in annoying glitter, correct?'

He grimaces. 'The glitter was just once, to demonstrate how far trace contact can carry evidence. All your conditions were met, John. Thus making it a rather dull exercise. In order to recompense me of all the effort I put into the hunt, I will sit here and observe you.'

I smirk.

'Right. I know that trick and I hope you have hid the other stuff somewhat better, Sherlock.'

'Hmm?'

'The Chicken And Egg method. You can hand it over now. Whichever you've sat on top of to keep me from finding it.'

He quickly disguises the emergence of a fleeting proud smile, and disentangles his long limbs to rescue my oyster card.

'Nice touch', I say, pocketing it. 'Oysters lay eggs. You sat on it, as if hatching it. Am I to expect lateral logic to all the other missing items?'

Sherlock raises an eyebrow in a simile of innocence and dazed confusion. 'Would I do that?'

Nicely played, mate. But I've got a tactic for this. First I'll play nice, by the rules. If you made it all too hard I'll have you lose your patience. You brought this on yourself, I'm a Watson, I don't give up.

'You're circling me, John, how interesting', Sherlock narrates. 'But you'll notice all the other objects are in the flat. I haven't _ate_ _them_.'

I smile. 'That's one up on my sister Harry. Sherlock, I'm rather good at this, I'll make you regret messing with my stuff.'

'Really? Look at you now. Engaged, curious, alive. _You love this game.'_

'I put up with my flatmate.'

His smile widens. 'You love me for it.'

'You are too smug for your own good.'

'Am I now?'

I stop staring down Sherlock and dive towards the cold ashes on the fireplace. Sure enough, buried in the burnt wood remnants I find my work ID. Undamaged, if a bit dirty.

The detective huffs, annoyed. 'How did you know?' he asks, despite himself.

'My work. You hate me going to work. That's a tiny bit obsessive, by the way. You'd find all fiery destruction for my work ID.'

Sherlock rolls his eyes at that.

'You've finally switched sides, have you?' I ask naturally as I run the ash dust on my jeans, to an acceptable level.

His eyes narrow. You're goading me, John. How amusing.'

'Yes. You said you'd watch me search, didn't say we couldn't talk.'

'Sides, you say?'

'Yes. You're creating mysteries instead of solving them. But, of course, there's one ultimate mystery of yours that I will never solve', I say, slowly pacing the room.

'Just one? I highly doubt that.'

I mirror his flashed smile.

'I will never figure out how your incredible brain works', I state in one go, as I reach inside the skull to fetch my wallet. 'You shouldn't trust I would forget my own hiding places, mate. Lots of times skully here kept your cigarettes.'

'You know what they say. "Dead men don't talk".'

'And "money talks", clever. Again, playing with concepts and associations. See, Sherlock? That's your downfall. Everything needs to be rational, neat, clever. Random occurrences are the hardest to figure out. All else can be traced. Your life mission solving mysteries has taught you that... One item to go. My set of keys. But have you really got them? Or will I find them in my jacket's pocket?'

'Keys on a bad taste keychain. _This one, _in fact?' he trails a hand from his dressing gown's pocket to bring up a battered keychain. No keys in sight. 'Five keys, John. Why would you keep hold of your MoD's sponsored temporary accommodation bedsit for army veterans, I wonder? You live here now. Why would you possibly want to go back? Which, of course, you can't, as it now houses someone else?'

I sigh. Figure he'd notice. He's Sherlock Holmes.

'It keeps me humble. It's not easy to explain. I... am aware of how lucky I am. That having 221B I still carry a key from a moment in time, somewhere I got out of in a stroke of chance, having had the luck to meet you, Sherlock.'

We both look away at the same time.

'So... keys', I remind him.

'And a condom.'

'No, you can keep it for your experiments, Sherlock.'

'Thank you, John.'

'Just please don't unroll it and hang it out of the living room's balcony again.'

'I was conducting important data collection on the predominant winds on compact urban settings, John. Improvised wind sleeve of miniature size.'

'That was not its size according to the box.'

'John, enough. Keys, remember?'

I nod. Keys. One last item and freedom is nigh.

Well, freedom to go across an unlocked door to the stairwell and then back. Not going anywhere, we're in a bloody lockdown.

That makes this the lamest escape room ever.

On the other hand, Sherlock imagined this. And it has been surprisingly easy for the love child of a bored kleptomaniac detective with too much time to spare. I can hardly expect him to give up my purloined keys without a real fight.

If he does, we're setting up home-schooling for the detective to relearn his skills under his own deductive method, and to learn to create mysteries instead of just solving them.

Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Mysteries Maker? A nicer twist on criminal mastermind. We can hide your family's heirloom and give you leads to insert in your will. We have a boot camp to train you to run away from kidnappings (I've got loads of experience there), and a whole semester's worth on applied criminology to help you find out how long that leftover curry has been living in your fridge. Any of those, and more, should keep us busy a while, until the lockdown is over.

'You have been doing surprisingly well, John. You excel with riddles. It's therefore amazing how bad you are with proper investigative work.'

I roll my eyes at that. Anyone is crap when compared side by side with Sherlock Holmes. You need thick skin to survive the sidekick post.

Randomly, I open the floppy disks box, the filing cabinet's drawers, the teapots on the shelves behind Sherlock's chair. As I near the kitchen, the detective has the grace of shaking his head, to nudge me away. And no, he wouldn't lie, Sherlock plays by his own set of rules, but outright lying is beneath him. So I feel inside the Union Jack pillow, lift the rug's corner and peek behind the skull picture on the wall. Still nothing. Throughout I try to get a reading on my impassive friend, but he blocks me out with a blank expression and remains fully immobile apart from breathing and blinking. I try harder. I look under the sofa, behind the curtains, and even approach his violin.

'Not in there, John', he quickly volunteers. His beloved violin, he allows me to touch it and a few rare other people, but always tries to avoid it. So I give him his space and leave the musical instrument alone. I can always swap it for my keys if tomorrow I'm running late for work without success in this treasure hunt.

Work. As an essential worker of the medical kind, it's one of the rare reasons I leave the house nowadays. But as there are too many cases in London and the UK, it gets harder by the day to face work. One patient at a time, is all I can do, I fight for each with all my energy and determination. I return exhausted and haunted. The loyal support of one Sherlock Holmes the only thing that differentiates my days at the moment.

'John, you are distracting yourself from your quest', my friend warns me.

'Not at all. I got it now.'

'I highly doubt that. Your keys are still hidden, they are in my possession.'

I smile pleasantly as I lift my extended first aid kit, a duffel bag full of medical supplies. We usually keep it hidden at the end if the sofa. Too many times we returned hurt from our outings in London, chasing criminals. Best to keep it at hand. But now I admire the layer of dust gathering on the surface of the duffel bag. It's been a while.

'Where, Sherlock?'

He sighs, defeated.

'With the epi pens.'

'Well, you're wrong.'

'Wrong, John?'

'Yeah. It's not the adrenaline rush that keeps me here. Don't get me wrong, I like the danger, and the cases, the unexpected and eccentric, even this odd Easter hunt. But that's not the key to why I'm here.'

He squints. 'You make no sense. Just drop it, John. You won, you found them all. So what now?'

'I'm only following your line of thought. Your choices have revealed more than you bargained for. Sherlock, I stay because 221B feels like home. These keys were in the right place from the start, as long as they were in 221B. Get that?'

I blinks in the most indignant manner he can muster. I shrug and join those keys with the other stuff on the coffee table. 'Anyway, Sherlock, this is not over.'

'You have gathered all the objects', he corrects me.

I nod. 'Yes, I have. But have you found all your laboratory glassware yet?'

He jumps off his chair as of by electric shock, gunning for the kitchen.

'John, I will kill you in your sleep!'

I chuckle. He will not. It will take him all night to find his test tubes, beakers and microscope slides inside the dishwasher, all clean and ready to be put away.

'Good night, Sherlock!'

'_John!'_

_**.**_


	58. Chapter 58

_A/N: This is what I came up with. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

Sherlock Holmes has never known himself to be a quiet, patient man. Such benign person will never gravitate towards crime, murder and gore. They will have weekdays slippers after predictable workdays, and weekend slippers made to lounge about indoors or go out to the backyard fence for a chat with the neighbour. Sherlock would have abhorred being such placid type of person and would much prefer to plot the neighbour's death a handful of different inventive ways. In fact, he has never had any attraction for a peaceful stance in life; that is, not until he met John.

Now John is a conundrum. All woolly jumpers, cups of tea and always popping down to have a chat with Mrs Hudson; yet, he can kill someone – justifiably – with a simple, effortless gunshot.

Army soldier John is a graceful, fluid line of gunpowder and deadly marksmanship, wrapped in the most modest and unassuming exterior. A mix of domestic placidness and family doctor to all his friends. Sherlock often doubts any of them actually knows they meet up for a pint a man who could kill them – for a reason – without breaking a sweat. Brewing himself a cuppa right afterwards, with the good tea he stashes away for special occasions.

John is also a stubborn doctor who diligently saves lives through a global catastrophe. He's got a sense of duty and never demands the glory he's due from the world.

Sherlock would be lying to himself if he claimed not to enjoy the company of the complex layered John with the simple, smiley façade. Of course he does, John is intertwined with Sherlock as an intoxicating need. The Yang to Sherlock's Ying, a complementing piece of the detective's puzzle.

Where Sherlock is loud and shocking, John is quiet and placating. Without his faithful blogger, Sherlock would have been punched in the nose far more often than he actually gets – which is still a surprisingly high number of times.

And so Sherlock has learnt to lean on his friend to make sense in his own ways, like a strident melody made whole by a steady beat.

Maybe that was why he misses John so much, when John is off at work. And, really, Sherlock could hardly blame the compact small doctor for trying to save lives during a global pandemic.

But where does that leave Sherlock, the consulting detective? On a meagre diet of cold cases and teaspoon sized mysteries.

Where John keeps being a hero, Sherlock is a non-entity, a suspended mass of potential energy going to waste, or, worse, consuming itself in his own fabricated dark matter.

Sherlock is intent on not taking it out on the brave, overworked doctor. He is better than that. Still, seeping slowly into his consciousness is some bitterness over John's impact on the world and Sherlock's own uselessness. For he feels useless, alright. Bitterly useless, every time he sees John head out to work, his NHS lanyard and badge hanging from his neck, a decisive jaw lock as the short doctor is about to face a rapidly multiplying enemy.

Sherlock would fight those blasted viruses with his bare hands to keep John safe and get the world back to normal. He can't. John will never know he'd do that.

John will still go to work. Risk it.

Sherlock's incredible knowledge of human anatomy and failing organ systems is limited, alas, to the dead.

Saving lives once people are dead; again, that's John's field, if the person has just lost their heartbeat and John can still fight through cardiac massages and adrenaline shots and crash carts...

The kind of dead Sherlock comes across are quite well established _dead. _Usually anyone can tell that from a glance.

John always refuses to tell Sherlock how many lives he has saved that day, that week; through too much professional decorum. Sherlock suspects John keeps a tally on only those he loses, because it's ingrained in the doctor's psyche to blame himself.

Sherlock actively tries to explain to the doctor he's not a deity with power of life and death, that he can only _do_ _so_ _much_.

He suspects John only nods to make him happy. Every day John carries new shadows under his cobalt blue eyes.

And so, as useless as he may be in the current situation, Sherlock finds himself a temporary life mission; _to_ _help_ _John_. It's a simple directive, and a constant one that carries from simpler times before. John has always protected Sherlock, and Sherlock will always protect John.

There is a different, insidious and invisible enemy now, that will not target Sherlock personally, only threatens the destruction of humankind – like any good criminal mastermind – and that calls for patience instead of ingenuity, sensibility as opposed to dastardly wild explosions, and steadiness in lieu of grand risks.

Sherlock has got to admit this pandemic calls for John Watson.

And so Sherlock keeps himself one step back, guarding John, giving him all his support. It's the least he can do.

_**.**_

Dishevelled in a well-worn pyjama, I come downstairs to find Sherlock potting around in the kitchen, doing scientific experiments (of sorts). Lately he's been using soap bubbles from various household detergents, to test their tensile strength, and measuring an estimated surface area. By association of ideas, I assume, Sherlock is also eating a slice of pie, while calculating the spherical volumes of those soap bubbles.

'Sherlock', I start, tired and dragging my feet. I stop on the landing, leaning on the banister, looking at the detective, domestically engaged in soap bubbles experiments on the kitchen table.

At least this will be a nice smelling one, and so easy to clean.

'Yes, John?' he retorts, without looking up.

'I need you to do something for me.'

'Not now, John! I'm busy.'

'Sherlock...'

'Just drop it, John. I'm not interested. Also, I'm terribly busy. You never know when the size and shape of soap bubbles might be the key to saving the world!'

'When will you be free?'

'That will depend on his much your request will annoy me, of course...' he answers, wisely. He's still not looking up. I let go of the banister and take those few steps towards the kitchen, stopping just near him enough.

'Sherlock... _please_.'

He snaps frightened green eyes straight at me. Like a little kid who is facing his monsters in one swoop of bravery.

He's scared I'm trying to tell him I got it, the virus. In a childlike logic, if he won't hear me say it, it's not a real thing.

I realise I'm taking too long to answer. Questions drift in turmoil across his face; he looks... a bit terrified.

I take the opportunity to get a thermometer in his mouth. 'Don't chew.'

'John, what the—?'

'Also, don't talk. It will alter the readings. Now listen. I woke up really exhausted, but that's all. I've got no symptoms. I just came down to check up on you. If you're in the clear too – and you should be, because I'm really proud of how much you've been secluding yourself in order to keep me safe and working – then I'm spending a full day in bed, sleeping it off. Sherlock, repeat after me,_ I shouldn't have the virus_.'

He blinks, removes the thermometer from his mouth (my bad, I asked him to talk, not clever), and says after me:

'John, you have been exposed to a deadly virus from a number of patients who you doctored at the hospital.'

'Your short term memory is failing you, mate. That is not what I said.'

'That's 100% of what I hear every day. I'm a genius, remember?'

I smirk. I'll grant him that. 'I'm just tired, with a bad headache, and I'm not doing anything for a day. Doctor's orders. I'll be upstairs in my room, call me on my phone if you need— _no_, if the house is on fire. Just want to check your temperature before I get back to bed.' My words are calm and decisive, as I reign in Sherlock's worry. _Or I try._

'You're not going to be left alone on your sick bed!' he reacts, springing up from his chair, so much so that I find myself stepping back and hitting the sink with my lower back, painfully. It throbs in tandem with my head.

'Please don't talk so loudly', I say, after a flinch.

_Oh, damn. I've just set him off, haven't I?_

_Do I get a do-over?_

'John', he just about growls my name. 'If a patient infected you, I'm going after them. Do not worry, the Crown will never have a case, I know a few good ways of disposing of the corpse.'

'Woah there, mate! I'm a doctor, not a superhero. I'm not infallible. Personal protective equipment is not infallible either. But I'm just a bit tired today, after a few long shifts.'

Sherlock takes a step forward, narrowing the distance between us.

'You are never returning to work.'

'Don't be silly, Sherlock.'

'How else am I to keep you safe?' he protests, arms flailing as he steps back and gives me space.

Oh, this is an admittance right here. I smile and save the memory to explore later.

'It's not your job, Sherlock!'

'I've made it my job, John!'

I blink, surprised. Sherlock rants on: 'You never catch a thing from the spree of infectious patients who visit you at the clinic!'

'Yes. Yes, that's right. Keep remembering that and stop panicking.' I beat him in his own logic. He death-glares at me, grudgingly. 'Now, the thermometer, please?'

Resentfully, the detective puts the thermometer back and stares me down silently. He's sulking big time now. Soon the device beeps. He removes the instrument and reads the numbers.

'Worthy of a perfectly functioning human, John.'

_I'll frame that and just put it on the wall, shall I?_

'Also, John', he adds, 'you can take the sofa. I will procure your duvet from upstairs for you.'

'Why would I need the sofa?'

'You rest better when I'm in the room, and I will be comforted – and honoured – to keep an eye on you while you recover from your extreme exhaustion. You also rest better when you are facing the main entrance to the room, hence why you reconfigured Mrs Hudson's room upstairs, when you moved in, you can lay on the sofa with your feet to the door, knowing I've got the improbable means of entry, such as the windows behind you, covered. Sometimes, when you are too tired you get restless dreams, and I can sooth your sleep by playing some Bach on my violin. Lastly, at eleven the morning sun will cause a reflection on the Watson's family picture on your desk upstairs, that shines straight to your face, often rousing you from your sleep on the occasions our cases prolong themselves till rather late. Lest you are sleeping facing away, which is rare given that living in a constant war scenario has trained you to sleep on your back, ready to wake if trouble arises.'

I blink. _That's definitely thorough._ I'll move the picture frame.

Right. _Why am I arguing back?_

'You won't blow up things while I'm trying to sleep?' I still check.

'Not today, John. I lack the potassium iodide and hydrogen peroxide. I'll just carry on with plain old soap bubbles.'

I can't fight an escaping yawn. 'Sounds great, mate. When can I read the blog about it?'

'It will be done once you have rested, John.' He places strong but gentle hands on my shoulders and guides and to the living room's sofa, blatantly ignoring as I almost trip on my own steps.

'Thanks, Sherlock.'

'Not at all. I'm very glad to be of use, John. Just playing my part.'

_**.**_


	59. Chapter 59

_A/N: Keep safe and keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'What are you up to today, Sherlock?'

I worry. My friend spends an awful amount of time on his own these days, up to whatever tricks his mind conjures for him as a challenge. He has always welcomed solitude – he chose to study the dead, after all – but I don't want him to regress back to the muted genius times of his youth, long before I met him. It would be an incredible waste to the world, the same world that is being deprived of his wit, his brave courage of action and generosity of heart.

Those don't translate online as well as they should. They are misplaced in memes and contrived in quick posts.

And of course Sherlock keeps track of Mrs Hudson's progress trying on the flute (that could carry some revenge on all those midnight sonatas of her tenant), Greg Lestrade's exploits learning how to bake bread (he can't seem to follow through a recipe without leaving something important out; there's a supermarket shelves' shortage of flour for a reason), and Molly's tenth woolly hat she knitted for her cat (none of which that cat has approved yet).

Sherlock being Sherlock, he needs to do his own thing. Or several things, all at once.

Today he seems to be focused on less intellectual pursuits. _Unless your standard is that of a five year old child._

'What does it look like, John?'

'Like a fort, built on pillows and blankets.'

'Oh', he says, like a comment. 'Just drop it, John. You wouldn't understand anyway.'

I know I'm being reeled in, but I accept my fate.

'Try me.'

I take a closer look to the skinny genius. His lanky body has still got some good muscle definition, for although most of Sherlock's workout has traditionally been through his work routines of chasing criminals in fast sprints across rooftops and such, he loves to groom and care for himself in his cat-like attitude of superiority, and he really would not let himself go. His eyes are as bright as ever, reflecting sparkles of the rapid mind behind them. His skin is a bit pale from less time spent outdoors, I would say, but that is just Sherlock.

'John, when you're ready to stop sizing me up...'

I glare at my friend, being caught in the act. Sherlock is much too independent to have anyone worrying about him, not even his doctor flatmate.

'Go on, you're building a fort in the living room.'

He seems taken back by my simplistic relay of his creation.

'John, it's a safe space. A modern den. A man cave. An urban hut of isolation for the contemplation of life's mysteries.'

I tilt my head as I watch the precarious structure of sofa cushions, bedroom pillows and an old bed spread that he got from Mrs Hudson's closet upstairs.

'It's still in progress, then?'

'Yes, not done yet', he agrees, a bit deflated.

'Want a hand with that?' I ask, with a broad smile.

He smiles a genuine smile, taking on the offer eagerly.

Yes, it's childish, sure. But it's also brilliant. Escapism and comfort entangled in a temporary structure of safety. Why not? There are no clients these days anyway, no one will suddenly come crashing in to our little make believe world, full of judgement and superiority. We don't take on judgemental clients anyway.

Mycroft might still have a hidden camera in 221B, but this should give him a chuckle too.

Speaking of which, Sherlock seems to follow my mind's wander.

'Mycroft would never join in when we were kids. Really, John, you've got one up on Mycroft any day of the week.'

'We need a torch', I reply, feeling awkward.

Sherlock's eyes narrow. 'A torch', he repeats, displeased, a bit icy too.

'What is wrong with a torch?'

'We're not... _camping_, John!'

'Ohhh', I say, rounding my _ohhh_ in quiet sarcasm. 'You're getting competitive, now. I like that. Two huts, one by you and one by me, Sherlock.'

He nods, mischievous. 'How do we ascertain which is best?'

'We'll figure something out. Give me half those sofa cushions, mate.'

'I will not! Why should I?' he protests, already dismantling his early attempt and handing me a cushion.

'We start with the same blank slate. Makes it only fair.'

'How long do we have to create our own den?'

'Five minutes', I state.

'Alright. I can do with that', he accepts, looking me on challengingly.

'Me too.'

_**.**_

Two grown folks, playing forts and dens in their living room as the sun sets on a too quiet, too eerie London outside.

When the world is not its demanding normal ways, perhaps we too should give in to some madness and enjoy it.

After all this is done, when fast paced lives return to their desperate hunger for speed and productivity, perhaps then we've learnt to slow down once in a while, and do crazy things that don't belong in the social media feeds or need to be told on Christmas dinners. Perhaps we will find a modicum of personal exuberance that is for our benefit alone, and of a few rare people in our lives who we are blessed to share those with.

Once Sherlock is back at analysing crime scenes and disparaging the efforts of the official investigators, and I'm back with runny nosed toddlers and hypochondriac old ladies at the surgery, maybe we can still challenge each other to good old fashion den building contests.

'Sherlock, you need some structural support between the sofa's side and the lamp, your quilt is slipping.'

'Oh, thank you, John. You may want to address the odd shape of your duvet as it seems to have very obviously engulfed your armchair. Perhaps some stretching to soften the shape?'

'I see what you mean, good point.'

'Here, have your Union Jack.'

'Thank you. Are you sure you want to stab the quilt's apex to the wall with your dagger? Mrs H won't be pleased.'

'Mrs H will be surprised at the odd and gigantic moths we have had upstairs this year, John.'

_**.**_

'What do you reckon, John?'

'It's nice. It's... _Bakerfest"_, I say, cautiously. 'When was the last time you went to a festival sort of gathering?'

'Undercover, last summer, somewhere I forget.'

'Right.'

I can see the incremented work of the detective and it's very pleasing. A bit free spirited, a bit wild, a bit glamping meets serious artistic study. There are fairly lights twinkling through the quilt roof, extended tent-like over the back of the sofa with its cushions as walls. The quilt overlaps at the front, and is pulled back by ties as a circus tent entrance, or maybe a palm reader clairvoyant's home. Inside, Sherlock has stockpiled on his favourites. His skull rests perched on the fabric's folds on the back, like a little cartoonish devil figure telling him what to do next. Stacks of books hold his cup of tea, now gone cold I'd imagine. There's an old nautical telescope peeking through the entrance, and he's got the cookies jar hostage in there.

'Well, it's not _bad..._' I say.

His eyes narrow dangerously. In front of him he's got me head on.

'Ugh, against the predictability of your choices, John? From the coat hanger that holds up the duvet spread from the back of your chair to the teapot and tea tray resting on your cushion less chair as a ledge where you have arranged for your current reading book and your notebook and pen... tell me, do you really need a torch? What can you possibly want a make shift flag from a tea towel at the entrance, while you sit on a plush sea of cushions? Most of all, why would you need a camera in there, unless you are playing dutifully the role of tourist?'

I take the camera in my hands slowly and look at it attentively.

And there, I just took a picture of Sherlock in his Holmes den.

'I heard that shutter noise! Give me that evidence!'

'Never!'

He tries to grab my camera, but his legs get caught on the sofa cushions and he ends up diving headfirst into my duvet.

_**.**_

We spend the next ten minutes putting it all back up.

It's more lopsided than ever.

'Sherlock, this is my land. You stay on yours.'

'Fine', he replies, aloof. He didn't get the camera, but he used his own phone to take a pic of my den, so we're now even. 'Don't want you to come to mine either. There's a toll, by the way. A payable tax for invasion, if you dare. I can show you the remains of the last traveller who dared on my lands, John', he narrates, pointing at the skull behind him.

Sherlock in a fairy lights den does not make the best warlord.

Speaking of lights, the daylight has diminished steadily as day turn into night. I turn on my steadfast torch to illuminate my den a bit. Sherlock is alright on his side in his starry sky cover.

'I'm sorry I destroyed your man hut earlier, John.'

We feel the quiet seep into us, from the cold night outside.

'I'm sorry I teased you for your glamping tent, Sherlock. It looks amazing.'

'So what do we do now?'

I shrug. 'Tell stories through the night? You know, A Thousand And One Nights style?'

He blinks. 'In summer time the night's length is shorter and over a thousand tales equate to very short stories indeed, John.'

I smile and lean back. 'Tell me one of your cold cases, Sherlock. You've been working hard at them.'

He shakes his dark curls. 'No. _You work hard_, I just vegetate. Survive. Wait for this impossible constraints to be done with.'

'That's not true. Look at us now. We're adjusting. We're enjoying ourselves. Sure we want life back to normal soon, but— but it's a amazing how well we're actually doing. A bit nuts, a bit emotional at times. We're only human, after all.'

'My cold cases are hardly enough', Sherlock confesses. _To keep away the darker times_, he means.

'That's because no one seems to know the amazing work you're doing. Tell them to me. Let me appreciate them.'

'But they're commonplace, John!'

I lean forward, interested. 'It's the commonplace case that is the hardest to solve. No intriguing, scandalous traits to put you in the right track from the start? Tell me!' I beckon.

He smiles quietly. 'Only you, John, would know how to appreciate the mundane as a work of art.'

I shrug. Only Sherlock can make the extraordinary become part of our daily lives so faithfully.

_**.**_


	60. Chapter 60

_A/N: Grown from a sudden longing._

_Still no cases, I'm afraid. I'll try to come up with something more intricate next time._

_Keep keeping safe, keep keeping strong. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

Sherlock Holmes is not a man who gets frightened easily. As many thrill seekers, he revels on that eyes wide moment as one hops off an airplane with two engines on fire, a second away from being clear of the hellish ball of fire and metal, about to pull the handle on the parachute, desperate delusions that it may not open running wild in his mind.

It's John that tells him off, as he reaches the ground. _Needed he wait that long to open the ruddy parachute?_

The famous detective smirks, for he knows John would have been only too keen to join him in the manic, erratic manoeuvres to reclaim possession of a diplomatic nightmare letter from a prince in a foreign potency to a prime minister, stolen by a lover, handed to a pizza delivery man, scooter-ed to the airport and handed to a retired aircraft pilot with a heart condition who, unfortunately, suffered a catastrophic heart attack when Sherlock burst into the cockpit. John guided Sherlock through heart massages and all the other fine points of CPR to no avail. With the plane crash landing into the sea – sabotaged, it seems, by the prime minister's security team, perhaps – it was pointless for the detective to fly the vessel to safety. He did manage, however, to make it turn round, double back over the airfield where John was presumably desperately calling his friend's name, and gasping in anticipated horror. Sherlock calculated a course that made the aircraft safely crash into the sea – no fishermen or cruise ships about – and popped the parachute nearby the airfield where a tiny speck of blue jeans and off-white jumper awaited for him in frantic gestures, curses, pleads. _Honestly, if John doesn't mind his heart rate he may get some heart problems of his own._

But that was nearly two months ago.

Today is self-isolation day. Again.

All days are now self-isolation days.

They all blend into one another.

Sherlock misses his fix of adrenaline and heroism.

He can only guess how strung up John is, the original adrenaline addict.

_**.**_

I'm popping popcorn in the microwave (after cleaning the machine carefully and removing all biological specimens from the grotty space, curry leftovers and unmentionable others). Haven't made popcorn in a while.

_You can't really have Movie Night without popcorn._

Sherlock didn't know about movies with popcorn, and of being a couch potato for a night. It was just one of those things the hermit, stoic and spartan detective didn't know before I became his flatmate. I'm sure Sherlock had plenty of fun with his former flatmates; I'm just not sure they saw the fun of his peculiar habits and sense of humour. Pickled toes and microwaved eyeballs are turn offs for most regular folks, and I can't blame them. As for me, I don't let those minor things bother me. _Doctor and soldier, remember?_

For some reason, Sherlock is more into this Movie Night than usual. He asked me for a scary horror film. A very scary one.

He did laugh at Hitchcock's woman getting stabbed in the bathtub, saying she would have seen the intruder's shadow across the shower curtain, and that the black and white blood was very inky and not behaving like proper coagulating blood as it drained away through the plug hole. He may have had some more objections, but I elbowed him in the ribs and told him to shut up.

I apologised for it some time later.

_**.**_

John is ever the warrior, watching tight jawed the nonsensical plot forming in vivid pictures on 221B's telly. At least that is what crosses Sherlock's mind as he returns to the sofa, briefly asking "what did I miss?"

The soldier launches into a quick, farfetched explanation of the plot so far, without taking his eyes off the screen. Sherlock, for his part, does not take his eyes off John, analysing the quick, shallow breath, the tense muscles, the dilated pupils. _Surely John is not so highly reactive to cheap fiction!_

Sherlock tries every day to get this level of attention from John. Must Sherlock join the ranks he defeats, and start acting as a deranged killer to get John's full attention?

It's all too predictable, a bad celluloid waste of effort and a meagre logic narrative. By the end of it, all the secondary characters will die, one by one, and the hero will make it out alright due to a romantic love's self-sacrifice, or the romantic conquest is spared as a winner's prize. It really doesn't abode well for brain cells and masses, that this was another box office hit. Sherlock would not accept a true romantic lover's sacrificing themselves for him, nor would he acquire possession on account of saving their life. Why does John excuse those as poetic liberties for artistic expression?

_Honest, John must dim some of his neuron synapses to follow such contrived cinema plots with meekness._

Sherlock takes a seat by John's side, barely disguising a contemptuous huff.

_**.**_

I pretend Sherlock's huffing and puffing is not happening at the moment. For if I acknowledge it in the slightest, it will send the detective into a rant over the plausibility of the plot, the female protagonist's lack of winter suitable clothing while the male counterpart is wrapped up in a fur trimmed coat, or the Art Deco teapot making a backdrop appearance in a Victorian era period story. Watching a film with Sherlock can be incredibly distracting, and he loves to pick it apart so much that I lose track of the plot. Even in action movies I lose track of the number of explosions, or in – lord forbid – crime dramas, the new dead bodies and plot twists.

If only Sherlock would allow himself to sit back and enjoy the film, maybe them I could find out who killed that man in the Orient Express at last.

_**.**_

It mesmerises Sherlock that John Watson, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, is a man who is munching popcorn in an automated abstraction, as he lives and breathes a silly digitisation of a celluloid film some seventy-something years old.

'John, put something on I will like to watch.'

The doctor blinks and looks up. Takes Sherlock's cue and hands over the bowl he has been clinging to as a lifeline. Sherlock evenly divides the remaining batch of popcorn. A start over.

With an extra pinch of popcorn for Sherlock for the effort.

'Just drop it, John', the detective pre-empts John's protests. 'You made the popcorn on account of me. Technically they were meant _for me.'_

Sherlock can still make John giggle. Not always on cue, though.

'Yeah, sure. Lemme think of another movie...'

The blond gets up from the sofa, stiff limbed, and wobbles over to the telly (the remote for which has long succumbed to Sherlock's experiments, and now magically operates the shower head, somehow; apparently it's a health and safety upgrade in Sherlock's world, a disposable device in case the investigator spills on him concentrated chemicals that corrode metal taps). John mulls it through and finally settles on a highly unrealistic front cover film.

'You'll like this one, mate.'

And Sherlock secretly trusts he will, for John knows him better than anyone. Except maybe Mycroft, his brother. But Mycroft would never know a scary film to advise. That's got to be John.

In order to keep John from going too smug from his correct choice, Sherlock starts picking apart the film from the first murky plot scenes.

_**.**_

Sherlock won't settle down. I guess this isn't working so well. I repress another elbow to his ribs, because the last one made my elbow sore. I need to make sure the skinny detective is feeding himself more than just popcorn.

For now I keep my focus on the film, secretly appreciating the detective's snide comments on the plot, the acting, the lighting and the soundtrack. You see, I know this film well so it doesn't bother me. Sherlock is the one in for a few surprises yet.

_**.**_

There is something about watching scary movies in the company of someone like John. The sturdy soldier's quiet nature is an anchor for Sherlock's fast beating heart as the protagonists on screen keep making awkward and implausible choices; _really, there's a ritualistic killer on the loose and you decide to separate to investigate the spooky woods?_

'Sherlock, we did that with that garrotter's case.'

'Yeah, but we're professionals. Those idiot kids clearly are not', he huffs.

John hums, gravely, and gives in.

Sherlock turns his attention to the quiet man who is so good at keeping his quiet façade. One moment he wears his heart on his sleeve, pleading to Sherlock to take the emotional case of an orphan young lady being stalked, or explaining why he needs the ladder back from Sherlock's experiment with the ceiling carbon monoxide detector's threshold to rescue a kitten stuck up a tree. The next he's the quiet spectator of a mass massacre of teenager characters on the telly as if he has seen far worse.

_John has._ He must still be somewhat desensitized to violence, too good at spotting the ridiculousness of faked injuries. _Good heavens, he seems to be enjoying it!_

Sherlock nudges closer, appreciating the solid presence of John as the preposterous plots unfolds further damage to the pre-doomed characters.

_This is Sherlock's favourite way to watch a scary movie. By John's side._

**.**

The lanky detective is a curling ball of tense, twitching muscles, every time the television screen makes him jump off his seat.

I could chuckle, really. _This is the man who defeated Jim Moriarty?_

_Jim would have chuckled too._

Sherlock inches closer, unconsciously, seeking warmth or the comfort of another person. Like a small child. I wrap an arm around him – his ribs are protruding again, how did I miss that? – and nudge him closer.

Cat-like eyes flash my way. _Have I pushed him too far? _He studies me intensely for a couple of seconds. Then he gives in, slowly drifting his gaze back to the screen. _He trusts me enough to let his guard down._

The usually standoffish detective allows himself to lean his head against my good shoulder. I rub small circles on his arm and, sure enough, soon he starts relaxing somewhat.

_This is the best way to have scary movie night; with a warm presence beside you, reminding you that you are safe now._

_**.**_

Sherlock feels a bit exposed, but he doesn't bring himself to push John away (it's John's movie of choice, after all, if anyone needs to leave it's John).

In fact, he enjoys John's protective presence. He feels safe by his side. John is the most dangerous man Sherlock knows – all soft smiles and woolly jumpers, but he's been trained to kill without breaking a sweat. The fact that a dangerous fighter who could get away with murder is _protecting_ _you_ is apparently something that Sherlock enjoys deep inside. He wonders if he should be disturbed by that, at some level. Maybe he trusts John too much. But for now he'll keep at it, for he's much too comfortable, much too safe, to care otherwise.

He further collapses his dark curls on John's broad muscular shoulder – it's as if John carried the world on them, sometimes Sherlock believes he tries. John hums an approval distractedly.

Safe, peaceful, and for once with a soothing orderly quiet in his mind, slowed to a sluggish, sheepish contentment, Sherlock allows his eyes to close softly.

_**.**_

I look down in surprise at the soft lips that exhale warm air to the rhythm of Sherlock's dreams. He's sleeping on, ignoring the exaggerated gore on the telly.

_It'd figure the detective's best lullaby would be a scary movie._

And he needs to sleep. Sherlock never sleeps right. Sometimes because my comings and goings disturb him due to my strange shift hours at the hospital, sometimes because those goings fill him with anxiety that I too might catch the virus. I know he's been lying to me when he promises he'll catch up on his sleep as I go to work. His good intentions derailed by fear. And when I'm home, he's hesitant to leave my side and miss out.

Something, perhaps the close contact between us, has soothed Sherlock's quick mercurial mind to a halt, and allowed me the role of his guardian. I will keep him safe, from scripted villains, deadly viruses and the rest of the world. _Time has slowed to a standstill, there's only the two of us here now._

_**.**_


	61. Chapter 61

_A/N: Still setting this one up. Hopefully it pulls through. Like for all else, long term plans are useless these days. -csf_

* * *

_**One.**_

I sit up with a jolt, springing up from the hard mattress, encumbered by the damp, burdensome bed sheet. I fight its hold frantically, feeling trapped, vulnerable to attack, damaged from the ongoing war, as my fading nightmare still overlaps reality as I see it. I stop suddenly, putting all my conscious effort into convincing myself I am awake now, I am safe, I am at Baker Street.

A disembodied voice beckons me from the walls, or the stairwell, or outside my window:

'John, in your own time, come downstairs. Do get dressed, we're going out.'

Paranoid, I'm still looking left and right in the room, checking the shadows after the wardrobe, the blind spot behind the chair, even pondering checking under the bed for hidden monsters.

That was Sherlock. I'm half sure of that, about as sure as I'm awake.

Sherlock's quiet input – a command, in essence – helps focus the military man in me. It's easier to focus on marching orders than it is to accept the feeling of shame and lack of control drenching me as I realise Sherlock will have heard me. Gosh, did I shout out loud? I must have, whilst trashing on my bed, or he wouldn't have been roused by it.

How on earth can he keep his cool when I'm a frigging shivering mess right now? A loud one just moments ago too!

Damn it, what I lack at rational cold headedness right now, Sherlock compensates it. I just wish he had pretended he couldn't hear me.

I hope it wasn't as bad tonight that he had to _stop pretending _he couldn't hear me... how many other nights?

A shiver runs down my back, and I'm not entirely sure if it's only the sweat damp t-shirt cooling on my skin that brought it about. I sigh and let my face fall hidden between splayed hands; no, not enough, I bring my knees up and hide my face there as I hug my legs. I realise I started sobbing quietly at some point.

I would give anything for Sherlock not to know of this. Not just yet. My strengths will return with daylight as it lifts the shadows from my mind. I will know then that I'm alright, this is alright, and Sherlock knowing is alright. Before then I just want it all to go away.

'John, I don't take kindly to being ignored', the upper class tone returns then.

'Shut up, Sherlock!' I shout reflexively to somewhere in the bedroom, somewhere by the old chest of drawers, the one I'm quite sure Sherlock can't have fit into like a contortionist.

'John...' It's a quiet admonishment; and I can almost hear him tut away and look conspicuously at his wristwatch.

'Go away', I groan, not shouting anymore, and recuperate my former stance, hiding childishly in those shadows that accompany me. Giving in to their oblivion.

'John. John. John.'

I look up sharply, glancing around in the empty room. _I'm not hallucinating this conversation, am I?_

'Sherlock, where are you?'

'Oh, hello there, John!' There's newfound triumph in my friend's voice as he finds me engaging at last. 'Do come down. Your stiff shoulder will be hurting by now. Soon it will seize up unless I provide you with a distraction.'

'You're not here', I surmise, with a heavy weight dropping on my stomach.

'_Oh.'_ It's a gasped exclamation, laden with shock and guilt. He stumbles on his words to quickly relay: 'Air vents, John. 221 Baker Street is an old construction. There are disused air vents carved into the walls. Great places to hide a gun or disperse a toxic gas, but more significantly to have a chat with a friend closing up on himself after a night terror, one that he suffered as a legacy from his heroic deeds in the war. A friend as such should not be lonely. I shouldn't have to be crouching by a metal vent near the floor in order to have to talk to you. On your own time, but fairly quickly, my knees are bruising due to all this kneeling.'

I chuckle in the darkened room. Reaching out a trembling hand I turn on the bedside lamp. The switch clicks into place, and my friend relishes that sound.

'Good, John. Very good. Come down now.'

'Where are you?' I ask.

'I will not tell you. You'd block the vents in a misplaced and futile attempt at keeping your privacy. Dignity is not measured on the unconscious responses to trauma, John. I will keep track of your nocturnal disruptions–' _is that a notebook snapping shut I hear?_ '–and would not dream of judging you... Oh, "dream" was not the best choice of word, granted, I was not trying to rub it in!' It's an awkward turn to the eloquent speech, reminding me Sherlock is not just the voice of rationality permeating my reeling mind, but he's also my friend, waiting downstairs.

'Alright, Sherlock, I'll get dressed first, don't spoil it all with a peek show after such sage wisdom, wait downstairs for me. I'll be down in two.'

'Got it, John. Over and out.'

I chuckle some more, forcing my cramping legs to swing over the mattress' end and put my feet on the hardwood floor.

My right leg buckles at the first attempt to get up, and I crash down, knees first.

A quizzical silence echoes from downstairs after that.

Slightly humiliated – drop it, John, you're a doctor, you know some disorientation is absolutely natural, considering – I force myself up and shuffle my feet to the limping rhythm of the next couple of days to come. Downstairs, Sherlock resumes an imaginary battle with fine china dragons, or so I can deduce.

_**.**_

'Anyone with a middle name initial on the first half of the alphabet will have a cup of tea waiting outside their bedroom door', Sherlock says, quietly, from the living room.

'Yeah. Seen it. Good thing I did, or I would have kicked the cup and spilt the tea all over', I retort, juggling holding the cup and saucer on one hand and using the railing to support me as I come down, one step at a time.

'My bad', Sherlock comments, accepting mysterious responsibility. He comes out of the living room with huffed impatience, meets me halfway up the steps, takes hold of the teacup and snakes an arm around my waist to steady me for the last steps.

I'm past shame now. I'm thankful. My right leg still feels wobbly.

'Sherlock, that was some neat trick with the air vents, but I'm afraid you've shown your hand. I will block any vents I find in my room.'

He hums in agreement, making me the more suspicious. Was his voice emanating from the old porous floorboards? Was he actually hiding in my bedroom? No, he said he wasn't, he wouldn't, he knows I'd punch him.

'John, I am a magician with a good trick. I will never reveal my secrets.'

_Just give me time._

'You say the vents are part of the house? Because it's an old house?'

'Naturally, John, much like the coal shaft in the basement, the cat flap at Mrs H's, and the secret passages.'

'No, I installed the cat flap when she kept that client's missing cat that wasn't bothered to come collect. By the way, how's the kitten?'

Sherlock blinks.

'Happily growing up, but still fits the cat flap you installed.'

'Nice to hear that. No, _wait_. Did you say— "secret passages"?'

'Finally', he huffs under his breath.

'Secret passages!' I'm baffled. Really?

'I'm a detective, John. It's a basic requirement when searching for a flat if you're in my line of business, why else would I choose Baker Street?'

'Because of Mrs Hudson, I presumed.'

'Yes. Her too. She was a basic requirement too.'

I take a heavy seat by the kitchen table and recuperate the teacup offer. He politely pretends not to notice the thin clatter of fine bone china cup and sauce together. Honestly, couldn't I have a mug? Are midnight cuppas fancier than regular ones? Or did he break my RAMC mug _again?_ Because I know he keeps spares...

'Seven.'

'Excuse me?'

'You are excused, but do pay attention, John. Seven. Going by the severity of the aftershocks rattling the porcelain set, your nightmare was a Seven, in a scale of 1 to 10, naturally.'

I sip a bit of the soothing, fragrant tea – for once it's alright, Sherlock works best under pressure as Jim Moriarty found out – and defend: 'You need to adjust your scale. A Three at the most.'

'Don't lie to me, John. You are the worst liar.'

'Lie?' I hiss behind my cup, for confidence. It doesn't come out as outraged as I had rehearsed in my mind.

He gestures vaguely at the clean t-shirt and same pyjama bottoms I went to sleep in. 'Why won't you ever make an effort to look good at my side anymore?'

I catch the humour in his eyes and chuckle. We're like an old married couple.

It's as if the fluorescent ceiling light in the kitchen had become stronger and warmer. Light returning to my world.

'Sherlock, we're not going anywhere. Lockdown, remember?'

'Whilst I understand your concern and raise an objection due to the deserted streets in the middle of the night—'

'You're not risking it because of me.'

'Whilst I understand that', he starts over, 'I have an alternative, John. Have you been paying attention?'

_No. I'm in no fit state to pay attention._

'An alternative provision, you say? Have you got a gigantic hamster ball to keep us encased in a plastic bubble?'

The detective blinks, as if actively storing the idea for further reflection. _Don't you dare, Sherlock. _I squint remorselessly.

'You said', I recall, 'secret passages.'

Eyes now twinkling, my friend nods, waiting eagerly on that last bit...

'Well, show me them!' I add.

His smile widens.

'If you insist... Here.'

'What's this?' It's a brown paper bag he hands me.

'Packed lunch. You might get peckish.'

_**.**_

Sherlock Holmes has made it his job to know London's ins and outs. Show him a picture of a random front door and in 7.8 seconds he can successfully place it in its street and borough, using his incredible mental repository of information, aka his mind palace. Play him a recording of traffic at rush hour and he can tell you the approximate width of the street, the time of day, the weather, and might even pick up on a distant train passing – the 4:17 from Paddington – or the noise of school children with their specific sub-regional dialect specificities. After all, the detective is also an accomplished musician with a fine tuned ear. But for all his achievements, and the hard work he has put into them, Sherlock has also used his vast knowledge of the busy city to disappear from it at will. Sherlock knows the best bolt holes, how to avoid the CCTV cameras and dive into the quirkiest hideouts, away from a demanding world.

I half though he was about to try to persuade me to take refuge in one – _here, John, we'll both sleep undisturbed if you keep in this one _– akin to the room behind Big Ben's clock face (I think the ongoing repairs have taken that one off the list) or the leaning tomb one (a Halloween favourite of Sherlock when he feels the party revellers, that never even dissected a body, are mocking his work).

Yet this seems to be something new. Sherlock is convinced there are secret passages, leading directly to an old forgotten part of London, unpopulated, straight from 221 Baker Street. Sounds improbable and downright ridiculous, just the setting for our best adventures we have ever shared.

I gladly give the rest of my night to my best friend.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	62. Chapter 62

_A/N: Yeah, I'm still alive. I know, it's been a while. No excuse. Just writer's block, which is magnificently ironic given that I'm not a writer. The characters were feeling contrived, vaudevillian, mechanic. Slowly they are starting to come back in shape, I hope._

_Keep safe, keep strong. Look how far we've come. -csf_

* * *

_**Two.**_

Like two naughty children up at the odd hours of the night, Sherlock and I come down the worn wooden steps, carefully avoiding the creaky ones. No point in disturbing Mrs Hudson's sleep with sounds of break ins and intruders. _Just a little mid night stroll, nothing to see here._

There's old familiarity in the scene before me, as Sherlock's flexible limbs mount down each step, a soft rattle of expensively tailored fabric hugging the straight lines, punctuated by soft curves, of his suit trousers, highlighted by the warm gleam of the lamp light above. A white shirt, with rolled up sleeves and tight hugging fabric, makes for a striking contrast. A classical composition of night and light that echoes his pale skin and dark waves.

I hug myself in my tatty pyjama bottoms and navy t-shirt as I feel the first chills of the drafts blowing in from the front door. I hesitate. Surely we should get a warm sweater each?

_Never seen Sherlock actually wearing a jumper, unless he was mocking me or disguising himself as part of his network._

_There are still so many simple life comforts for me to teach this incredible man._

Sherlock must have read the off beat thought in my walking pace as the fine musician sends a quick quizzical look over his shoulder.

I shake my head. _I'm fine._

I've just been rattled out of bed by a gory nightmare, a mishmash of terrible memories and foreboding fears. I'm not about to feel _uncomfortable_ whilst awake anytime soon.

He scans my face a couple of seconds too long, as if finding and cataloguing there new lines he has not encountered before. As he turns back to the path ahead I think I still catch a glimpse of genuine worry. He looked young, burdened, saddened.

But he still leads on. Grabbing his long coat and my short jacket from the coat pegs by the entrance.

_Freaking gloating for his mind reading act, I can tell by the smugness emanating in waves from his back._

In my hands, I'd swear my jacket feels dusty, but it must be my imagination. We both still go out, sparsely, for essential reasons. We avoid it like most others, to avoid the spread of a virus that might lurk anywhere – everywhere. Then why do I feel mischievous for putting on my jacket?

For one, I'm wearing bed clothes underneath. I'm not in the habit of going to work like that.

Secondly, it feels like an adventure might be coming up.

I look on over to the great detective, suited up in his long coat. Like an armour in battle. We cross gazes, both analysing the other's wellbeing. I find nothing to worry me there.

I think we're ready now.

_**.**_

'This way, John.'

There is an overhead light bulb pending from the ceiling as we descend to the basement, marketed by Mrs Hudson as 221c. This dingy flat that she couldn't quite rent due to the constant battle with black mould, at first. Then as her other tenants' fame grew she would get offers from reporters, fans, hopeful apprentices and enemies, but she just couldn't quite warm up to any of them as she did to us. Thus sparing Big Brother Holmes overtime vetting each applicant. I believe he sent Mrs H an appreciative spa weekend offer in lieu of a proper thanks. Anonymously. She said it did wonders for her bad hip. So Sherlock and I got her another pampering weekend soon after. Or I did. Sherlock used that weekend to install spa features into Mrs Hudson's place. He likes to keep her near. Even the out of town spa was too distant for his liking.

221c remained, this way, vacant. Sherlock is not one to think highly of personal space and property, so he quickly started dumping some of his stuff in the basement flat. And how he once got a stolen race car in there I'll never know. My money is on it having been pulled apart piece by piece, then put together with the same meticulous precision. That would explain the forgotten tail light left behind after the race car mysteriously disappeared into the ether overnight.

I tried asking Sherlock why he put a race car in the basement. He logically replied it didn't fit in our living room. Not without my armchair having to go on top of the fridge, and I wouldn't like that much. Apparently he's a nice guy like that.

I look around in the low ceiling room, with the peeling wallpaper, the disused chimney breast and the high up window that opens to a railing fenced opening to the street. Not for the first time, I ask myself how different my life would have been if upon my return to London I would have found myself in a place other than 221B, a place like this?

'Sherlock, what if I had been able to afford 221C's rent? You'd have been my neighbour, not my flatmate', I tease.

My friend grimaces instantaneously. 'Nonsense, John, you had precious few things when I adopted you.'

I blink. '_Adopted? _I'm not a stray!'

'No, of course not, John', he mutters, distractedly. 'Help me push this box.'

Reflexively I start helping at once. 'Sherlock, I'm not a stray mutt!' I insist. He ostensibly looks mad up and down.

'No, albeit you could still do with some grooming.'

He goes as far as to ruffle my short hair somewhat, before I manage to duck away.

'It's the middle of the night!'

'You had very few possessions to bring into the flat, John. I, on the other hand, had arguably too many and am extremely generous when it comes to sharing. _Push, John!'_

There's a huge crate between us. Sherlock only knows what's in it.

'Yeah, sharing is caring. Hence you use my laptop all the time! _Your side now, Sherlock.'_

'_Our_ laptop, John. Be generous.'

'What have you even got in here, anyway? An Italian marble statue?'

'Hardly', he rolls his eyes. 'But I see your right leg is doing absolutely fine.'

My hands release the crate as if it had just shocked me. 'Wait, what?' I look down on my leg, reach out to rub the unfailing thigh muscles, then back to Sherlock's face. He looks amused, light, proud – and is that _caring_ I see in his face?

He changes course perceptibly. 'The trap door is located on the other side of the room, John.'

'Wait, we moved a half-ton box just to prove my leg would manage?' I point at the crate, bewildered.

'Nonsense, John. I needed space for a grand piano.'

'What grand piano?'

He rolls his eyes.

'Obviously, it's not here yet? There was no room for it!'

'It won't go through the doors or the window!'

'Oh, John', he minimises, 'there's always another way.'

I groan.

Sherlock is already kneeling beside a shade darker set of floorboards in a sea of grey, scratched, worn-out floorboards. He pushes away a three legged chair that scratches the floor reluctantly. The grating sound echoes disagreeably in the low ceiling room. The detective moves a couple of card boxes too, clearing the space from all but the parallel black lines that the outside railings cast upon the floor under the electric lamp lights, with their spear-like endings.

My friend snatches his leather pouch from a coat pocket and removes a flat thin file. He inserts metal between wooden boards and snaps them apart. The removed plank reveals a portion of what is quickly becoming an exposed trap door, with a round hook centre stage. It looks old, rusty and forgotten. Over a century old for sure.

'Is it safe?' I ask, in a tight whisper.

He smirks audaciously. 'Would I ever do that to you, John?'

Point taken. Wouldn't want it any other way.

_**.**_

'As a doctor I couldn't possibly condone getting ourselves into narrow, suffocating passages, full of toxic moulds and slippery surfaces, without one other soul knowing what we're doing out here, with the emergency services stretched as they are—'

Sherlock is impassable as he interrupts my reasonable rant:

'And as a soldier?'

I take a second to study his earnest profile. He's being serious, quite serious.

'Let's get the hell on with it', I say.

'I'll have the soldier today, John', he says, flippant, as if ordering a food choice from a menu. _I'll have the soldier special today, with a large dose of chips on the side, how about you, John?_ He smirks, too cocky, to say: 'Always a good choice when walking into the unknown.'

Sherlock always makes a mess of a proper compliment.

'Wait.' I grab the skinny detective by the arm, as he turns to go. 'You said you knew where this would lead us.'

'I read Mycroft's report', he admits, 'but not gone down there myself.'

'We're taking Mycroft's word now?'

'Problem?' he squints his cool mint eyes, shaded by the dusky room.

I scoff for a second. 'Yeah! Your brother doesn't do legwork. He's not the highest recommendation in the land, not when it comes to a possibly dangerous underground tunnel.'

Sherlock smirks, reading something on my face _I didn't even know it was there until now._

'Coming?' he asks again, infuriatingly smug.

Damn it, _something's_ definitely there.

'Yeah, alright, lead the way, MacDuff...'

_**.**_

It's not as ancient and decaying as I pegged it to be. In fact, Mrs Hudson could charge for this underground patio at will, with just a little sprucing up. A new layer of plaster, perhaps a lick of paint, upon the brick walls with the low ceiling and bowed steps leading us down, far into the underworld.

The weight of a full building above us, straining these stained, damp walls. A fleeting hint of worry crosses my mind, but I dismiss it easily. 221 Baker Street won't cave over our heads. It has been around for a long time, and it will always live on as it is, an unperturbed sanctuary for those in need. I don't know how I know this, or how I know it will come to stay like this, I just feel it in my bones, just like Sherlock, and the rest of London and beyond. Timeless and precious, it withstands the test of time.

Sherlock walks ahead in the narrow path, holding his phone up as a potent torch. Imperious in his attitude, determination squaring his shoulders, he insists on taking the lead as the first explorer.

Sherlock's dark curls brush negligently against the old drapes of cobwebs, weighed down by dust. Long abandoned, for not even spiders can get a decent feeding where nothing lives, nothing grows, all remains preternaturally suspended in time. I follow suit, behind the detective, not missing out on his graceful elegance and dastardly dare. I rather take my uneasy palms to the rough walls as I fear tumbling down the rogue steps, in a less fine and more grounded spectacle of daring.

Don't need to open my arms wide to feel each wall beside the stairwell. I touch the bricks and the feel cold, musty, unyielding of their hold on the house and on time itself.

'In which direction are we heading?'

Sherlock hums, before pointing out: 'What would you say?'

'Cutting across the street, easily. We are almost reaching the buildings on the other side.'

'Newer constructions, John. Any ancient connection to those houses is long severed.'

'Why connect the basements this way?'

'Shared cellars for groceries and coal, communal baths, or safe hideouts during restless times, who knows? Perhaps just the idea of a fun joke to the architect in charge. This part of Baker Street was expanded in one grand sweep of urban development. Most of all', he's slowing down now, 'it came to substitute what had been previously built here. An even older, forgotten part of town.'

My hand touches what feels like dried old tree bark. I remove my hand and marvel at the huge vein of wood protruding from the brick vaulted tunnel, scarring the patchwork of rusty browns. It's a tree root, but there are no longer trees up above us. A marker, a memento of the past.

'Get out of the way, Sherlock. What can you see ahead of us?'

He moves out of my way at last. And looks me straight on.

'Another tunnel, John. We carry on... I do hope you remembered to bring your packed lunch, you get cranky when you're hungry.'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	63. Chapter 63

_A/N: More yet to come. Sorry, it feels a bit short for some reason. -csf_

* * *

_**Three.**_

Ahead of me in the narrow underground tunnel leading away from Baker Street, Sherlock slows perceptibly as he studies the wall around us; wrapped in a tight loop, warping into a concave ceiling made in the same brick and mortar that encases us. The detective glances my way, enticing my curiosity without ever uttering a word – _because he can_. I come closer, attracted by the mystery he touches restlessly under his fingertips. Some gravel falls at his feet as a result, revealing the edges of a dusty metal grid, a vent in the brick wall.

'How in the world—? We're buried six feet under right now!'

'Definitely more', Sherlock corrects. Not phased by the notion of being _buried_ _alive_. More _alive_ now that we can tell there are built in vents to aerate the confined space. As I wonder how can they possibly still be functional, a small red spider emerges crankily from the openings. Each point leg edging forward in a numb yet mechanic walk of eight limbs and one mind. I recede slightly, but not the arachnid. Unaccustomed to human interference, it fears us not at all.

I guess that settles it. The vents are functional, leading shooting shafts to fresh air reserves somewhere above us.

Street gutters? Strangers' basements or back yards? Hollow air conducts in old houses like 221 Baker Street? I inch forward again after the spider, as if I could only squint and see beyond the metal grid.

Nearby, Sherlock glances at his wristwatch and comments placidly: 'Oh.'

I turn ominously. 'Oh?' I repeat.

'Come here, John.' My friend grabs me by the arm and grapples me into a tight, perfunctory embrace. My face ends up pressed firmly against the soft wool fabric of his long coat, his arms wound around my frame, keeping me locked in place. The torch illuminates us from an awkward side angle as Sherlock holds his phone against my shoulder, white light striking his features in sharp planes and dark hollows.

'What the—?'

Then I start feeling it too. A distant thrum, a vibration born out of the dirt ground and the rusty red bricks themselves, accumulating in frequency and intensity, becoming the stormy rolling clasp of thunder all around us, inside us, vibrating us into unsteady stance. Sherlock clasps me closer as if the intense storm could indeed sweep me away from his grasp. I stop trying to pull from the embrace and envelope him in the same tight fascination as the mortar keeps dropping as crumbled dust on our heads, loosening from the old tunnel. I wonder fleetingly if we are destined to meet our end here, buried alive, but I know – Sherlock a steady presence under my fingers – that we will pull through together, that we are the only witnesses amidst the collapse of the known universe.

The vertiginous sound is near deafening around us before it starts subsiding measuredly, like a desert storm edging away over the sand planes. I look on up to my friend's face, finding his eyes abnormally large. Fear, then. No matter what he acts like, he's human, he too feared as we survived the onslaught of danger around us, absolutely defenceless.

'What the hell was that?' I ask only as I'm sure my voice can override the receding thunders.

'Underground carriages, John. I counted six of them, but may have been wrong. How many did you count?'

I blink. _None. Just one endless roar, mate._

'Next time then', he dismisses the query politely.

'Where are we? Parallel to the Underground network?'

The detective frowns. 'Why ask a question only to answer it in the same breath?'

'Well, I didn't know if I was right. Was I right?'

'This time, yes. We should have paid attention to the spider.'

'The spider?'

'Emerging this side for safety, clever little thing. Yes, the spider. It has grown accustomed to the Underground passing.'

I squint, look around in the dusty but empty tunnel on our side.

'So we're on the other side of an Underground track? Which one? How far from Baker Street have we come?'

He only smirks. Then he presently releases me – somehow I hadn't realised we were still hugging into a tight ball of detective and blogger – and presses on as if it were just another mid night stroll.

'Come, John! Three minutes until the next Underground!'

I hurry after him, sufficiently motivated by the specific time warning.

_**.**_

'Here we are, John.'

The words uttered by the detective make no justice to the scene we have laid out before us as we emerge from a meagre, flimsy door on the wall, no lock, at the end of the long brick road and tunnel.

"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

Sherlock stares, definitely puzzled by the quote. No time to explain.

What we have before us takes us to a different land altogether.

It's a city. Or part of it. Under huge arched vaults of stone, brick and mortar, the main artery of a cobble stone street, or a segment of it. Store fronts line up on either side, along with front doors to half buried homes that grow no higher than a storey or two before they disappear into the brick and mortar. The top of those constructions engulfed by the abode ceiling suspended over the whole scene. The cast iron street lamps – gas lamps, perhaps – are too suck into the greedy vaults above, their tips merging into the brick patchwork. There is a lonesome hansom abandoned on the other side of the street, no horse. A small public fountain with a tap and a bowl to feed water to the waiting horses. There's a wooden stand with forlorn fabric stretched over it where some newspaper stacks still stand, shrivelled by time and damp. All stopped in time, a silent suspension, an eternal wait for a restart that will never come.

The colours are dusty, but alluring, vibrant yet. The atmosphere is stale, but not suffocating. It reminds me of a film set, but more _realistic_. There is plaster flaking off a nearby house, a crack on the window display of the next store, a lost shoe abandoned by the side of the road and I can still tell by the sign that The Strand Magazine's first volume was dated March 1891. Wow, that's close to 130 years ago...

I notice with a slight shock that there is no living being in sight. But how could it be otherwise? We are not visiting a lost civilisation under the city, but a buried segment of Victorian London, forgotten in the collective memory, little more than a hamlet of old nestled houses among the complex modern layers of London's Underground system?

Finally I realise also that I'm capable of discerning all this because there is light. Not the street lamps, of course not. However faithful the air ventilation from the connected tunnels or the surface above that keep us from running out of oxygen and passing out flat on the cobble stones, there is also electricity entering the site. At every centre vault along the tunnelled old street – and there are about four or five of those, sturdy looking – hang cobwebbed veiled chandeliers, wring in thick iron metal.

'This can't be true', I mutter, dazzled. Too dazzled, in fact, to blink. I want to take it all in, childishly fearing that if I blink I may be awaken, back in my bedroom.

It's a good dream. A better dream.

'Breathe, John. There's enough air', Sherlock reminds me, sensibly.

He's also smug, the bastard, knowing he's done it again, pulled a neat trick out of his magician's hat, surprised me by the sheer impossibility of my senses.

I follow the road with my eyes up to the murkier shadows ahead. There's an obstruction beyond a low bridge, it seems. Where it once lead, it is no longer accessible.

'Sherlock, how can this be? How did this survive?'

We've been walking about on the main street, aimlessly, just gazing around us. The detective shakes himself awake like a dog shaking off a flea. Then, contemplating me, he admits: 'Let's find out. Come, John.'

_**.**_

We're both lost tourists travelling in time and space, without the handy aid of a time machine. That doesn't stop Sherlock's fascination with the nearest window shop front, where wooden mannequins still rest their eternal stillness enveloped in fine tweed among further veils of arachnid silk. Sherlock tries the front door handle. It's open and the crystalline silver chime of a doorbell clinks every time he opens and shuts the door.

I stop the swaying door – solid oak, one loose hinge, collapsing from its frame – and keep the detective on the first mosaic inlaid step. There are a few notices attached on the door that catch my eye. Buried deep in the old city specimen the ink and paper have not faded much, secluded from daylight and chemicals. I can still read the gist of it. Among "The Great Chandler; magician, acrobat, contortionist and mesmeriser of wild beasts; acts that will spook the heartiest of men" and "studious young scholar gentleman of good birth searches to fill a vacancy of honest nature", there is a thicker paper in HM Queen Victoria's arms emblazoned stationery stating "Fever Nest; keep out of premises; Her Majesty's surveyors have deemed the waters insalubrious and rejected them for human consumption this day; heavy fines and imprisonment may be delivered to those who disobey the monarch's ruling and defy the quarantine".

What on earth? We just left 2020's pandemic virus to land headfirst into a Victorian quarantine zone?

'Typhoid, John. _Not_ our present day virus and _not_ a disease that will survive in abandoned premises to this date. It's safe.'

I nod, still bewildered. This seems straight out of a contrived case study scenario in med school.

'Typhoid fever. That's why this place was abandoned in a hurry?'

'By Royal decree. Progress and modernity carried on around it, buried it into some sort of time capsule for a better day's revisit, yet it fell out of collective memory at some point. Deleted out of maps entirely, in time.'

'Wow, this is... _brilliant_.'

'Indeed.' He hums like a content feline purring, I notice. He can't tell me he's not enjoying this, that he's putting himself through this for my benefit alone.

'As far as we know, only you, I, and whoever pays the electric bill for those overhead lamps knows this is down here.'

'Not entirely sure there is an electric meter running off those lamps, John.'

'Well...'

'Well, what?' Sherlock's eyes narrow as he reads off my body language.

'Are we exploring this place or not?' I dare.

'Most assuredly we are, my dear Watson.'

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	64. Chapter 64

_A/N: Should be one more after this one._

_No secret passages in this old place I'm renting, just spiders. I checked._

_Keep safe. Keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**Four.**_

Sherlock presses his shoulder against the wooden door, jammed in its frame by a compressed brick wall. Subjected to a ton of weight above, it slowly subsides. It's the first sign I see that this time capsule – street block edition – will not last forever. We are explorers of a forgotten, suspended past in the deeper layers of London; far beyond the constrictions of a contemporary capital and a dangerous virus that still sweeps the nation, the word, ramping up destruction and suspending our normal lives. Here, deep underground, we find ourselves in the ultimate bubble. A wild, near hysterical, feeling of relief hits me as I let the quietness of lost London wash over me.

I won't need to worry about washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, carrying the virus back to Sherlock, to vulnerable patients, and general strangers. There's homely feeling to this forgotten place already, just because in here too there's a measure of safety.

Do I wish I could live here, free from worry? No, of course not. I'd miss the surface too much.

Still, it's a nice extension to 221 Baker Street.

The stubborn door in a wall between ordinary looking constructions gives in at Sherlock's bullying ministrations. It opens to a small squared area filled with a brown dry vegetation mat and a fallen tree trunk running crosswise over the ground.

'It was a private garden', I realise. Nothing more than dead vegetation now. With limited dampness and no light, most plant matter is dried up, fossilised, crunchy beneath our footsteps. I crouch to touch the dried bindweed at my feet, the last to dehydrate.

'John.'

I turn my head. He's found himself another door. He's quite fond of locked doors, old Sherlock is. It rattles him to find a closed door he cannot open and explore beyond.

He's got the same attraction going for drawers, backpacks and laptops, I can safely relay as his flatmate.

'Sherlock, there's nothing here to find. It's all gone now. Nothing but dead brambles. We're 129 years too late.'

'Nonsense, John! There's a lot to find out. And I don't mean the other silk shoe from the one we saw on the street, just there, housing a frankly beautiful collection of coloured mushrooms.'

I follow his gaze and find the oddly pleasing ensemble. How did I miss that? I only saw death and decay, Sherlock is showing me slight treasures in a sea of loss. He refuses to focus on the destruction, forever attracted to light. _Being my light._

'Watch this, John', he requests of me, abandoning the second door to stand by my side. He swings the first door shut, allowing nearly no street light to flood the encases space. I raise an eyebrow at him. What is he up to? Sherlock taps his phone and the torch light changes drastically. A blue-purple light floods the area, bouncing off the walls and decaying garden matter. It brings up a myriad of bright spots in bright bleach white, twinkling all about us, clustering in some patterns too, such as a wavy lines fan atop the dead tree, glowing pleasantly.

'It's deadly poisonous, John, I wouldn't touch that saprophyte mushroom.'

I don't, but I still feel impressed.

'Ultraviolet light? Your phone gives off UV light?'

Sherlock shrugs. I must check my phone to see if it does that too. I'm fairly certain it doesn't. Not yet. I hope there's an app for that.

'There is life down here, John. Plenty of life. Just not as we know it.'

I nod, still bewildered, as he swaps lights with ease. This underground street a brave new world unexplored. Once again the detective approaches the locked door on the other wall. 'Coming?'

'Absolutely.'

'Good.'

I blink.

'Where are we going now?'

'To the theatre, John. To watch the great Chandler's act. Did you not read the poster?'

I smirk.

'Don't we know a couple of Chandlers?'

He shrugs. 'Common name. Keeps turning up. Nothing to worry about.'

I chuckle.

'Unless you're named Chandler.'

'Precisely. You get every barista in a right state, when you're _yet_ _another one_.'

'Not a common problem for you, Sherlock.'

'No, but I am capable of feeling for you, John.'

_**.**_

Out of an impulsive decision I brush my fingers against the electric switch on the silk wallpaper. It resists my intentions, rusty, until I feel it clink onto the other side. With it comes a wave of unsteady electric light, flooding the audience through a beautifully intricate crystal chandelier placed over the rows of worn out velvet, and slightly worrying buzzing of current through copper wires. I shrug at that last one. _Seems safe enough._

Sherlock experiments a nearby seat. He looks like an overgrown child in the smallish seats, wooden backs, dusty velvet he sits on. The chairs are noticeably smaller than today's, tightly packed together in rows. Nowhere to hold your popcorn. What a difference a hundred years can do for a theatre audience.

The detective is deeply interested in a forgotten pamphlet and hums the printed tunes on the back as he studies the acts that will never animate the stage again.

I leave my friend to it, and walk forward, magnetically attracted to that stage (must be the story teller in me), just beyond the fantastic drapes of scarlet velvet and gold trim. The stage is raised higher by about five feet, and planked in a vastness of grey, dry wood. I have no trouble finding the lateral steps that take me to the platform. I finally see the gaudy Italian romantic gardens and misty mountains painted backdrop more clearly, but also the support areas left and right of the stage, disguised by black cloth panels, where a hall piano is seemingly forgotten on one side and a giant wooden effigy of an elephant on the other side. On the stage area itself there are trap doors among the planks, I know not how to guess where they may lead, and at the front there are dark lanterns of considerable size. I go near one, wandering what sort of last play warranted the use of those. They remind me of old fog lights in historic lighthouses.

'Limelight, John', the detective drawls from the audience, seemingly absorbed by his pamphlet still. 'Literally achieved with burning hot limestone, a fairly common method of powerfully projecting illumination onto the actors on stage.'

I grin. 'Go on, I'm on stage. What sort of play would the audience have watched? A magician?'

He hums. The sound is surprisingly clear in the small theatre. 'There was a musical act with someone on the piano and a few girls in sequins and satin, dressed up as the horticultural variety of fruits and vegetables. Apparently a vegan music ensemble was very popular at the time.'

'Really?' I blink, astonished.

'Turn on the BBC any given evening before you mock the joyous exploits of our ancestors, John', he reminds me.

'Ugh...'

'Next came The Great Chandler. Magician and illusionist, also a famed acrobat', my friend reports, getting up and walking up to the stage. 'Chandler came in through the mist – dry ice, John – riding on the back of a mechanic automaton in the shape of a fierce elephant.' A showman himself, Sherlock takes easy control of the stage around me, pacing about, stretching an arm now to the giant wooden construction backstage. 'Chandler jumps to the stage floor as the animal carries on, very disciplined, away from the stage. There are two acrobats coming on from above, doing the tight rope trick, they are his assistants. Someone has wheeled over a metal cage.' Sherlock smirks as he sees his modern audience of one engaged. 'Chandler has his assistants chain his wrists and ankles. Shackled he is lead to the metal cage.' I find myself stepping back, as if to give space for the conjured memory. 'There he is locked inside by three sturdy lockets. The keys remain in the audience sight at all times. A velvet sheet is placed over the bars of the cage. At this point you realise the cage does not have a ceiling. It is presently about to be occupied by a very heavy weight on a slab, that five men are holding above the cage by pulling on the rope with all their might. Huffing, sweating, you get the gist.' Fair enough, I see the pivot point tightly secured in the ceiling above the stage. Sherlock narrates further. 'Inside, remember, Chandler is bound tightly and he must free himself from his shackles, open the cage and escape before time is up and the five strong man drop the weight on him. It's quite certain he wouldn't survive. The audience gasps, morbidly delighted. They paid to watch a man try to defeat death and they want to see him struggle. Time feels suspended. The show master counts down the time. The lovely assistants in feathered boas are looking preoccupied. A majority of ladies in the audience gasps in concern for their idol. The gentlemen shift nervously in their seats, greeting over the worse outcome. The strong men grasping the rope glance at each other nervously. The countdown ends. The weight is dropped, the sound of impact is deafening. Someone screams in the audience. The lights go out. One beat. Two beats. The lights return. Chandler is scoffing us, sat on top of the metal cage, watching us like a flighty sparrow. A young Errol Flyn before his time. Unharmed, freed from all restraints. He jumps to the stage, bows to the audience cheering him loudly. The curtain drops as he's adamant he cannot possibly reveal his secrets, it's magic.'

Sherlock is bowing himself to the empty audience, in his effort to mimic and portray the lost act. I cross my arms in front of me.

'That's very imaginative, mate, but how would you know all that?'

Sherlock straightens. 'Because, John, on the last day he ran this act, The Great Chandler never showed up perched on the cage top. He wasn't found crushed to death within either. He simply vanished, and that was his best trick ever. Chandler would never be seen again. It helped his fame that he had vowed never to leave this theatre again. Some said he haunts it. Oh, the theatre audience and artists knew the fate this street was to suffer. Chandler opposed it wildly. All his machines, his automations, his tricks, buried in the ground. He refused to accept that. Made one last grand show and vanished in the peak of glory... Don't look at me that way, John. The description of the act and the circumstances of the last appearance are explicit in the pamphlet provided to the audience. I know Chandler never showed up again because the theatre was never cleared of the elephant or the piano. No one would have them. No buyer was found at short notice, as if the props could have been cursed by the great illusionist.'

I uncross my arms, rub my fingers over my chin, pondering the detective in front of me.

'So you're taking this case, then?'

'Indeed, John, I am', Sherlock declares, his eyes sparking fiery in the subdued theatre lighting.

_**.**_

'Trap doors. They must lead somewhere from under the stage', I say, pointing to the woodworm bit planks with some hint of wax coating still.

'Naturally, John, you presume the assistants and the strong men were in on it. I'm afraid not. The strong men were volunteers from the audience, vetted by the theatre owner. He himself was one of the men holding the rope, dropping the deadly weight.'

'Doesn't mean he wasn't in on it, though.'

'It does, if you consider that Chandler was deep in debt to many creditors, including the theatre owner. Paying for cast iron mechanics and feather boas was expensive, and he wasn't getting much revenue from the upper classes he drew to the theatre regularly as they were shying away. There was a vicious rumour circulating that the great Chandler was an anarchist, supplying the anti-monarchical movement with different tricks. Whether that was real or a defamation was surely beyond the point as he first used the controversy to attract audience, but slowly he was losing them. He lost his beloved promised fiancée. She refused to marry him just days prior to his great disappearance'

'Again, how can you possibly know that?'

Sherlock looks away to the audience, at once. 'Magician's library, a children's collection. You may be surprised to hear that I was once interested in magic as a child, John. Purely a scientific interest, I assure you.'

I grin. _Of course he would be that child._

'So this Chandler guy was a well known magician?'

'A passing reference on page seventeen.'

'But you couldn't shake this mystery away.'

'I was a child that delighted in curiosity, John, hardly a freak for that.'

I keep my smile, as I start organising my thoughts.

'Chandler was angry with a society that turned his back on him. Instead of declaring bankruptcy and heading for the poor house, he decided to disappear into the night.'

'Possibly board a ship onto some overseas land, and start over.'

'But he was a showman, so he decided to do that in with smoke and mirrors, so to speak... I don't think he would have left immediately, Sherlock. I think he would have hidden to watch the consternation dawn on every face, take in the mayhem he created, the legend he was establishing.'

'A greatest genius needs an audience', Sherlock declares confidently. First hand knowledge?

'So where could he have hidden?' I look around. 'The police will have investigated that, though.'

'Then we will simply have to be cleverer than the police, John. Let's split up and investigate. _Do not get into trouble, John.'_

I flip him off, as we part. I'm already approaching the huge elephant backstage, mesmerised by the big beast. Built from wood and metal, trimmed with colourful silks and bells. I'm bewildered by a eight feet tall beast. Must have been quite an entrance.

The animal rights activists would approve of it, at a time when animals were regularly used in acts. This ingenious magician depended on every detail going according to plan. He couldn't accommodate the whims of an animal. So he built himself a better one. A magnificent machine, a feat of steam power engineering.

I try to wheel it to the stage area, where there's more light to be had, but it's too heavy and it won't budge. I'm feeling its round belly for a trap door access inside when I hear the cry out that chills me to the bone.

'_John! Help!'_

I turn around, alert, fists clenched, muscles tensed. But I can't find my friend anywhere. He is vanished.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	65. Chapter 65

_A/N: Last instalment. Thanks for sticking around._

_Some people are resuming their lives, others wait. Precautions remain._

_Keep safe, keep strong. -csf_

* * *

'_John! Help!'_

_I turn around, alert, fists clenched, muscles tensed. But I can't find my friend anywhere. Sherlock is vanished._

_**Five.**_

Sherlock wonders how John can be so close and yet so unreachable. Take the nightmare that terrorised John earlier in the night, spinning out of axis the usually steady solid presence that is the former army soldier. Sherlock ransacked his brains for a distraction, a balm to pull back the familiar undertones out of the shivering mess that inhabited the soldier's bedroom. Of course the detective knew his intervention, whilst appreciated secretly by a tight lipped John, was not _essential_ to the man. John has an innately hopeful, bravely optimistic, daringly confident, way of returning to himself. _Give_ _him_ _time_. It's Sherlock that worries, impatient. Worries every single time as he watches the doctor return to himself, land after land of the wretched distance from the Afghan sands. It's Sherlock that wants to speed it up, confront John with the evidence of who he is, one Sherlock never stops recognising through his admiration of strength and sturdiness.

Sherlock wanted to extract John from his battered shell and bring him, resplendent and anew to the world. If at all possible, leave those accursed shadows behind.

In that process, Sherlock had bullied a sleep deprived veteran off his bed and pushed through dirty underground passages onto a lost world in no ones' knowledge – where phones don't get network bars, he has just learnt – where he John got prime spot to see his mate vanish. Leaving him cold and alone in a forgotten world.

_Great_ _work_, _Sherlock_, that should really do wonders for the soldier's battered psyche.

Only it's not, is it? John is the strongest _human_ Sherlock as ever met. John's tenacious loyalty and love are as dead certain as a sunrise, a constant in a changing world, a certainty to be counted upon.

As it happens, Sherlock's life currently depends on that strength and on John's loyalty alone.

He hears John's feet, in small steps upon the stage as the man searches about for his lost friend.

All Sherlock has got to do is to trust John...

Hold his breath...

_And don't drown before John discovers him._

_**.**_

Whose brilliant idea was it to part the two men team, let them explore the unknown alone?

Sherlock should revise his _I'm-a-genius _self-appointed title soon. I'll make sure to remind him of such.

'Sherlock, where are you?'

No answer. Is it a faint tapping that I hear from under the stage?

'Sherlock? Where the hell are you? Cut it out!'

I'm not having a good feeling about this.

Hmm... Okay, it's not funny anymore. I'm more than a little worried. Sherlock can be a jerk at times – take Reichenbach's after events for quick extrapolations – but he and I talked about this. I was sure he understood. I was even a bit certain he, deep down, felt guilty over my mourning of an alive detective.

But he always repeats the _alone-is-all-I-have _trick.

'Damn it.'

I've got a bad feeling about this.

_**.**_

As the oxygen saturation levels drop in his bloodstream, and starved lungs scream in agony, the last accursed thing Sherlock Holmes wants to hear is Mycroft's voice. He'd petulantly block out his older brother's voice if only he wasn't already using most his mind power _not_ _to_ _panic_.

He's got John. The steady soldier is the best associate a drowning goldfish could ask for.

He means, _a drowning detective_, of course.

His mind is starting to play tricks on him. _Interesting. _He must store that for later analysis, if only John gets him out of his watery grave.

"_How mundane, your trust over the soldier, Sherlock. Going by capabilities alone, wouldn't you had been better off trusting someone more in our intellectual league?"_

Damn Mycroft. He's but a lonesome genius himself, isolating in his ivory tower of excellency, pushing any one else away, even Sherlock who he seems not quite at par.

"_Use your head, Sherlock! Don't be stupid, your life is disappearing into unconsciousness as we converse and all you can think of is John Watson?"_

Apparently Mycroft's apparition is right.

Sherlock sees no way out from the locked tank under stage, he's banging on the trap door that separates him from John, and pins all his hopes on his amazing friend.

His big brains are no match to a stubbornly solid trap door.

_You must hurry, John –_ his desperate mind tries to reason with the soldier on the other side, before darkness gathers threatening at the corners of his vision.

The dark grey waters get darker and darker.

Then blinding light erupts above him.

_**.**_

Clear, angular blue eyes snap open, unfocused yet. I'm holding my breath, pressing fingers to Sherlock's carotid artery, counting those steady heart beats in the cold, clammy skin. He hiccups and I know to turn him to the side, just before he regurgitates a good portion of the buried Thames river's water. That's where I found Sherlock, struggling inside a water tank, under the stage.

I reached out whilst cursing him for his bad luck. He managed to find my hand and cling on, too exhausted to pull himself out of the death trap. I hauled him up, back and shoulder muscles teared to shreds without care, and laid him out on the old wood planks. Gasping for air, shivering in cold and shock, dripping water into a circular pool around him that presently soaks the fabric between knees and hems of my pyjama bottoms.

After the quickest medical check up I can gather, I divest myself from my jacket and wrap his lanky shivering figure in it, desperate to preserve his body heat. I wrap him up, not for the first time wishing there was more fabric in it, Sherlock's long coat missing.

We are alone on the death trap stage of a theatre suspended in time. Can't quite call the paramedics in. His life still in my hands alone.

I wonder how Sherlock's managed so tenaciously to hang on – there will be hell to pay when I know who to blame for almost losing my detective friend once more – glancing at the square trap door opening on the stage. I see only dark grey water, mostly flat but with some undercurrent at the bottom. An ominous maelstrom that nearly took Sherlock from me.

Don't want to leave a wretched detective, dry heaving on his side, prone against the stage except for his chest, periodically rattled by deep bouts of cough. Even if logic dictates I should get some external help. No, it'd take too long away without making sure my friend doesn't drown on solid ground from all the water he ingested.

_Don't you ever do that again, mate._

I shake my head. Adrenaline dying down, Sherlock's physical presence under the hand I keep splayed on his back absorbing the heart beats for reassurance. Steady, I'm rubbing comforting circles on the back of his hands, his legs, his shoulders, trying to stimulate blood flow to keep him warm. He looks small, curling on his side on the floor, like a lost child with dark bruises under his eyes. A frightened child, freshly rescued out of a terrible nightmare. I feel my eyes dampening, confident he's too wrap up in his discomfort to notice my emotions slip.

_This is the trouble with Sherlock. Caring about the skinny genius is a permanent pass to living in fear of losing him._

I brush the back of my other hand over my eyes, my damp forehead.

The soaked through genius senses something, he glances at me. Just in time – his reflexes are delayed – I plaster a placid expression on my face and straighten my shoulders. He squints, suspicious.

_I'm not about to let him get all cocky, knowing he scared the living shit out of me. He'd enjoy it far too much..._

'You ripped it open, John.'

What is he talking about? 'Ugh?'

'The trap door. You bulldozed through it with fury and righteous anger.' He stops short, looking a bit grey, before he surges forward, dry heaving again.

I patiently hold him by the shoulder and drag those soaked curls out of his face, hoping my small actions may comfort him, reach him wherever his mind goes when his pride is wounded. He's about to revert to a cold mathematical vision of the world, deriding emotions as weaknesses, equalizing his body's weakness with a personal failure, because his heart refused to beat at the rhythm of a machine.

_I'm here to stop that nonsense. Keep him human._

'You were drowning, Sherlock. Hardly the time to question my methods.'

'Could have been a bit faster, John, but I'm rejoiced that you solved the mystery of Chandler's disappearance.'

I huff. _Nope._ What did I care some dead guy did to amaze society over a century ago?

I raise Sherlock's exhausted form from the waterlogged stage, holding his chest to mine, trying to impart some of my body heat on his cold skin. I hug him tighter. 'Hush, Sherlock. You are safe now. You are not alone.'

I can feel the first chills rattle his thin frame as he grabs a fist full of my t-shirt. We can't stay here too long. We must head back and I will force Sherlock under a hot shower or a warm bubble bath.

'You didn't solve the puzzle, John', he deduces at last. He squints at me and glances around, finally taking some interest in our surroundings. His weary gaze falls on the open trap door just to the right side of the stage platform. Damaged by desperate fists pounding the old wood. Some kicking too. Anything to get through to my friend.

'I couldn't care less about the case, mate. I knew you were in trouble, nothing else mattered.'

He shakes his head. 'Hardly a time to solve a case', he agrees at last. I can feel his locked muscles starting to relax as his core body temperature increases steadily. 'You were brilliant, John. A hundred percent effective... As for understanding what happened to The Great Chandler, you can leave the deductions to me. It's what I do for a living, anyway.'

I shake my head.

'Let's get back to Baker Street. We can return here at any time. Preferably with you dried up and having avoided a pneumonia.'

His eyes narrow. I can sense the grey undertones returning to his eyes, and as always I wonder how he does that. His mind is inscrutable, but I can sense the swirls of beautiful melodies and vibrant connections lurking under the surface of I really look into his eyes.

'My coat, John!'

'You had to part with it', I point out, deliberately misunderstanding his urgency.

'Of course I did! It's made of wool! It weighed a ton, once it soaked half the water from the tank.'

'Right...' I frown. 'We'll fish it out later.'

He shakes his head, obstinate, as he struggles to control his limbs and get up. Trying to dissuade him through common sense advice, I follow his movements closely nonetheless as he forces himself up.

I'll put it down to _pride_. He wants to be brilliant and dazzling as ever, even as his hair plasters against his pale face and he looks visibly shaken.

'Sherlock, we don't have to do this right now...'

'We must', he insists. 'I want you know how the illusionist did it.'

'What?' _Why would I care?_

I keep a close watch on Sherlock, determined to give the smallest leeway to his need to solve this case with witnesses._ It's part of his recovery._

The gangly detective stands tall, shirt plastered on his chest and shoulders, frizzy hair sticking out in revolving directions like a wild mane, frantic gestures as if he was trying to distract me from his state with his brilliance, _which he probably is._

'This theatre, John! Chandler refused to leave this theatre, set up his acts elsewhere. Sure, there are a lot of constructions here: sets, mechanics, lighting, a lifetime of work. But out there is a sick late 1800's London with people dying of typhoid fever. Surely he knew it was time to start again elsewhere. Yet he refused. He absolutely refused, even opening the stage one last time just before the quarter got locked down. We can only guess how many people attended, and of those how many got their fates sealed. Chandler had a dwindling audience for his last act. A planned illusion, one memorable last performance, one that did not go according to plan.'

'Look, Sherlock, we need to get you dry. It's still a trek back to Mrs Hudson's basement flat.'

He ignores my good sense.

'There was a musical act. Then in Chandler comes, riding a mechanical elephant. The audience delights at the exotic sight. Two assistants make their own entrance and proceed to shackle the magician for the escape number. He is further placed in a steel cage and a timer counts the time he has to set himself free behind a veil, before he's crushed to death.'

'Yes, yes, you said all that. We really must get going, it's getting rather late.'

'But did you see the pamphlet, the advertisement poster on the wall? I mean, _really_ _looked_ at it?'

I know Sherlock is too desperate to tell me this. All common sense in the world couldn't stop him from telling me how it's been done. It's a compulsion, I would say. A necessity, he often tells me. He once likened it to a decluttering of his overwhelmed hard drive. I understand he needs to tell me this even before he fully regains control of his walking and I help him back up the tunnel.

'I don't follow, Sherlock.'

'We both saw it. In the poster Chandler's elephant emerges from the right hand side of the stage, carried by extra assistants dressed in dark clothes to match the background and darkened stage. They go from right to left. But on the pamphlet they used a photograph...'

'The elephant emerges from the left.'

'You got it, John!'

'Got what?'

'The poster. The plates were printed in reverse of what the reality had actually been like, as in a mirror effect. The poster was a xerographic engraving that got transferred faithfully but reversed from left to right and right to left. That last night...' Sherlock looks on to the gigantic effigy of an Indian elephant adorned in colourful silks and gems. That night the elephant got wheeled the wrong way around.'

I blink. 'So?'

'Inside the metal cage, behind the veil, Chandler released himself from the shackles through the expedient use of a master key he had hidden in his mouth the whole time. He now needs to plan his escape and reappearance on stage, outside the cage. He opens the trap door – you have do thoroughly sent to trial door heaven, John – and slides into the water holding tank that nearly drowned me. He let's the soft undercurrent drift him to the next trap door along, flowing with half breath under the stage. He tries to lift the second trap door, hidden in the shadows by clever use of the limelight spotlights. It won't give. There is something wrong, something too heavy under the second door. Can't you see? Chandler, the great, never planned escaping to South America. He had a beautiful career he loved, he couldn't bear to hold one last botched performance when he had perfected it so much. A new act, maybe, but not the old escape trick. That night the deadly mistake was made because everyone was frazzled. Reality as they knew it was changing too quickly. The mistake escaped even the man who had built the contraptions. The elephant was left on top of the escape hatch. Chandler tried to swim back, we can presume, but the current must have been stronger. He lost his strengths, his air, he didn't have a faithful assistant to pummel the trap door open and yank him out, sputtering and heaving but alive. Chandler lost the battle with his own trick. He died in his own act. His fame endured.'

I blink. Right.

'So you're saying you were down there sunk with a rotted corpse. Right, that's it, off to Baker Street with you', I grab him forcibly now.

'But my coat!'

'Oh, hush, I've fished it out with you, you never parted with it. Why do you think my shoulder throbs? I got the wet weight off you and whisked it away on the stage. It's been two feet behind you this whole time. _You're_ _welcome_.'

Sherlock glances sharply behind him. Opens his mouth to say something. Closes it. Gapes at me.

In different circumstances I would be very proud indeed.

'Back to Baker Street, mate.'

_**.**_

_**A few nights later.**_

'John, it's alright. You are safe now.'

I wake up with a start, and determinedly grab my gun from under my pillow and aim it at the insurgent. My breath chocked on my chest, my vision is blurred alternating between reality and vivid memories, my left hand shakes uselessly, but my right hand fits like a glove around my gun in a steady, vital aim. The shiny steel barrel trails my attention to the enlarged green eyes ahead. A cold shiver runs down my back and I immediately lower the gun.

'Ffff...'

Gentle fingers extricate the gun from my grasp. I allow their familiarity as I gasp for breath, confused, nauseous.

'Here, John.' His deep voice travels the short physical distance between us, as a premonition of the hug he envelops me in next. 'You are not alone.'

I blink and allow myself to feel the comforting presence around me.

'Thanks, Sherlock.'

He huffs, deriding my perceived need to thank him. I further gather, soon after:

'No air vents this time, like that other time last week?'

He shakes his head, I feel his curls brushing past my ear, tickling me.

'I chose to take a risk. Thought you'd sock me. I was wrong.'

'We all make mistakes', I huff. _I very nearly shot him._

'Don't', he pre-warns as I'm about to stumble my apologies into the most sincere words I can gather while shivering in his arms. 'I can tell when a gun remains with the security latch on.'

When will these wretched nightmares end?

It's a tough time, all these pandemic fighting analogies, the restrictions to a lifestyle that made London so very unlike itself. I lost my sensory anchors when I wake up in a quieter London, on a hot night, filled with stale air, disorientation leading me to believe I'm back there, in the real war. It's frightening to a grown man that remembers the war only too well.

'Thanks for checking up on me, Sherlock.'

'Just drop it, John. I will always go get you where your mind wanders, I will always bring you back home.'

I smile to his pyjama's cotton shirt.

'That sounds incredibly mushy.'

He stiffened, but won't relinquish our embrace.

'If you relay my words to anyone I will kill you in your sleep, John.'

'You wouldn't stand a chance', I retort, lacing my own arms around him and allowing one drowsy yawn.

I'm safe now. London is Sherlock, and I've got it in my arms now.

_**.**_


	66. Chapter 66

_A/N: Looking forward to a future time when we can resume some normality in our lives. We have all been heroes in our own right, because we have united, in the best of our abilities, to come this far, to do our part the best we can. We can't drop the ball now. Keep safe. Keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'Sherlock, your phone is ringing.'

The detective reading old medical journals on his armchair looks down on the nagging apparatus resting on the side table, and notes: 'So it is, John.'

I was on my way to a fresh cup of tea, but this more interesting.

'Not picking up calls today then?' I insist.

Sherlock shrugs it off. 'It's detective inspector Lestrade. He's got a case for me.'

I grin at once. 'Just like the old days? That's great! You need to take that call, mate. Do you want me to take your call and hint to Greg he needs to _beg_ you to take the case, for old times' sake?'

The detective rolls his eyes. 'He knows _that_ much.'

'So what's wrong?'

Sherlock huffs as he puts down the crinkled pages of the medical journal.

'But it's not like _old_ _times_, is it? I can't properly go out and look for clues, I can't tackle a running away criminal... The question, John', he sums up, taking up those papers as a cellulosic barrier wall between us, 'is whether I accept to be a _limited_ consulting detective.'

I take a few steps to shorten the distance between us.

'You're scared you lost your touch', I deduce. _I know._

'Nonsense, John! You don't stop being yourself because you take an enforced break, obviously.'

'Then you're scared you won't have enough investigative strategies on hand, and if you fail because of that, and Scotland Yard might think you lost your touch.'

Sherlock scrunched the journal, balling it into a release of fury, swings it at me. It obviously causes me no harm. He never intended to.

'Sherlock...'

'It's my name, don't wear it out', he says, testily, huffing as he rearranged his seating position away from me.

'I'll help you, mate. And I have full faith in you.'

He grudgingly thanks me:

'Obviously, John.'

Eye rolling so hard now that I wonder if he'll make himself dizzy.

_**.**_

John Watson, the smallish doctor I keep about Baker Street, is looking very adamant as he hands me a pair of nitrile gloves. I take them hesitantly. May keep me from experiencing full tactile sensitivity and impair dexterity while on The Work.

On the other hand, I wouldn't have had a bad night after poisoning myself with 98% nicotine solution left on The Crimson Road Bodies – title chosen by John, evident from its gaudiness. Luckily, my assistant deduced my state at the sight of my first chills, nausea, wide pupils and heart arrhythmia. The first minutes were quite satisfactory as a recompense for feeling the decaying muscular tone of a 12 hours old dead body, it was the night at the A&E that ruined the whole thing for me.

'Gloves', I accept them at last, snapping them from John's hands. He very nearly flinches. I'm feeling grudging enough to enjoy that. _Nearly._

_Not really. _John is not quite himself. That I should make him flinch is preposterous.

Ah, there it is. Reflexes 0.2 seconds delayed from his frankly impressive personal average (one of the pillars of his incredible marksmanship). John is tired, but alert.

Must keep an eye on him. _As usual._

The quiet doctor then hands me a mask. _Hell, no!_ It's going to mess with my developed olfactory sense! John, must you numb each of my senses in turn? That is a bad habit of yours, by the way, and I will tolerate it no longer!

He grabs my arm before I storm out of the room. He's deadly serious as he intimates, his warm pressing fingers causing goose bumps on my skin:

'The dead body could have the virus. You'll wear that mask.'

It's a flat toned command. I won't listen.

'It will muffle my brilliance once I tell the Yarders how it's been done!' There, John will never have that.

He flashes me an affectionate smile and I feel a good part of my self-righteousness melt away.

'They'll drink your every word, Sherlock, trust me. Every word', he assures me. Not for the first time I secretly wonder how he came to _trust_ me this much. Seems unwarranted. A heavy burden. An inconsistency most grievous. An allowance that slows me every time.

_A necessity now._

How much I trust this little soldier is beyond my comprehension.

'Yes, John.'

'And you can stop rolling your eyes at me!' he snaps, aggravated. 'I'm trying to keep you safe, Sherlock.'

_I know._

'What next, John?' I say instead, dispassionately. 'You'd wrap me up in cotton wool?'

His honest blue eyes narrow. I miss the vast blue expanse at once, as if it had been taken away from me in a snatch grab. It's near criminal.

'If only I could wrap you up in cotton wool, sometimes I wanted to', he admits, stepping closer. One step, tense muscles, alert senses, he looks two feet taller already. 'But I can't, so I guess I'll have to trust you. Trust your common sense, that is – god help me!'

I smirk. His antics a cover up for emotions he can't yet face.

Unlike John's belief, I know how to recognise and navigate a fair range of emotions. I trained myself for that. I just choose to abstain, to avoid being ruled by irrational fluctuations of hormone levels and basal instincts. I leave those to John, they fill his honest and expressive face. I watch a myriad of micro-expressions animate his facial tendons under the skin, releasing and compressing, tightening the jaw here, gathering in wrinkled layers at the corner of the eyes, marring the forehead with incoming lines like ocean waves abating over sandy beaches. John's face is a superb stage for a constant upheaval of emotions, a downpour of caring, worrying and bossing around – _yes, he tries_ – when it comes to me. I enjoy its frankness, its alluring charm. Unlike the Holmes family unit, John is transparent. He can barely hide a secret from me I cannot deduce. All his truth I can feel under my fingertips as I brush them against his temple, feeling the sharp staccato rhythm of his heart beating, reverberating against his skull.

There is enough sensitivity in these gloves, I decide. Possibly an upgrade from the leather ones, in fact.

'Oi!' John rebels, stepping back, severing our shared gaze. 'None of that wacky mind reading act. A man's gotta have some privacy, mate!'

He's clearing his throat, and shrugging his shoulders, looking away. Clearly uncomfortable, and I take those 0.2 seconds to smirk without him noticing. _A bit too late for that now, John._

But little should he worry. I like what I see when I look into the depths of his ocean blue eyes.

'I mean it, Sherlock! It's hardly fair! You can read me like a book, and you are inscrutable as a riddle.'

I let it pass, will not heed his request. Not this one. _This is caring, John._ You are taught me how, after years of ignoring it in me as a flaw I couldn't fix. You must always suffer the spell that links us now.

'A riddle, you say?' I smirk to his face. 'A man becomes one with his act, I suppose.'

John shakes his head, amused by me. Crisis averted. It's so rare that I get a chance to deduce John now. He simply _fears_ it. Hates that I may find some hidden truth in him that he is not yet ready to face.

'Mask, gloves. What other _sensible _precautions must I take?'

I hope I have derided the word "sensible" enough. John seems to notice. John always notices. He seems to be waiting for these moments. Must never disappoint.

'Keep generally away from people', the doctor says.

'A silver lining, at last!'

'I mean sensible distancing from people, Sherlock.'

'_Sensible_, there's that word again!'

'Tell me if you develop a fever, a cough... Hell, tell me if you get any symptoms at all!'

Again he tenses up facing the insurmountable task of caring for me, seeing me as a patient.

He seems oblivious to how much I fear the same thing when it comes to him.

_Caring_, again. I pinch my thigh through the pocket's fabric of my trousers, _stop it._

'Did you just pinch yourself?' John's blue eyes open wide.

_Damn it. Caught. Do not fess up._

'Sudden itch, had to scratch. Not a symptom.' _Diversion manoeuvre engaged. _'Why were you looking at my crotch, John? Is there a stain there from this morning's buttered toast?' _Keep cool, fool._

It's delightful to see the swirls of a furious blush dancing in tandem with a drastic pallor in John's face. He still believes me to think he's attracted to me. It's fun to mess with him. I know better. I know the truth.

John's eyes sharpen suddenly and my breath catches as a reaction. Suddenly I'm the prey. The truth is too fluid to grasp. I store that thought away for the moment, my mind processes too overwhelmed to persist but in the most basic conversation level.

'We do your work, then we come home, Sherlock.'

_Wrong, John._

'Our work.' _Please._

He nods in unspoken agreement. I realise I had held my breath. Stupid face mask. It'll be the end of me if I forget to breathe. It's imposing on my autonomic responses now.

'Lestrade will be there, Sherlock. He's overworked and tired. Keep your show offing to the bare minimum or he might not allow you back into a crime scene for ten years to come.'

'I'll be on my best behaviour, John.'

'A bit more may be required', he stares, coolly. _Ah_, the captain is taking over. Hands behind his back. He foresees mutiny and disobedience. _Fun._ I must not disappoint John, if that's what he expects from me.

I grab my suit jacket and shake my head mournfully. 'It's sort of a minty green, John.' The doctor looks preciously lost now. 'The face mask you got me, John. It clashes with my shirt now.'

His gaze falls on the purple fabric and he dry swallows. _He's taking me seriously._

_Sherlock takes the lead._ And now for the home run...

'Will you wait while I change?'

John's eyebrows knit painfully together as he stares at me. _Brilliant._

_**.**_

It's been a while. Half of the lot gathering at the edges of the crime scene I don't recognise. Some newbies, with apparent nervousness as they bumble about trying to act like coppers from the movies, and some faintly familiar faces transferred from other precincts. It strikes me as odd, that the world is not exactly as I left it, it has moved on, ruthlessly, as Sherlock and I have taken a break from The Work.

Some familiar faces too, I notice with some relief, as DI Lestrade comes up to the white and blue stripped tape that delineates the scene. He's squinting as he takes in the sight of us both, with masks and gloves; an upgrade over old times.

Only he looks tired, worn out. I suppose I do too. Only Sherlock is truly eager to be set free, to go on his life's calling. There's a coiled, thrumming energy vibrating from the detective's core, as an engine rearing to start, full gas, foot on the pedal, clinging on desperately for the green light is go.

'Lestrade', Sherlock drawls, suitably bored.

He didn't quite fool any of us. He's got to tweak his act. Return to routine.

'Good to see ya, sunshine! I see John hooked you up with some protective equipment at last. I owe him a tenner, never thought you'd do it! Come on in, you must be desperate for a fresh case... Guys, give us five!'

The detective inspector directs the swarming investigators with practised ease, making way for the consulting detective. That's loyalty and trust, and I hope Sherlock is not too wonder lusted by the gruesome corpse on display to notice the kindness and act accordingly.

'You'll like this one, Sherlock. Young female, no identification yet, deep laceration to the back of her head by a blunt instrument. We're having a search in the alley, but we could be looking for a number of discarded items littering the place, we're in for a good while searching yet. Drag marks on the pavement, from where she was brought here from a primary crime scene. Any other trace evidence on this sea of dirt and rubbish is near impossible to discern. We don't know a thing about who she is or why she died.'

The younger detective raises a curious eyebrow at the end of the DI's introduction. The next second he glances at me as his captive audience, before finally diving fluidly to the ground. Bloody flexible like a cat, my knees would give out in protest if tried doing that. Sherlock, on the other hand, looks as if going down on his knees was the most normal thing to do. Like he hasn't lost his touch yet.

I wonder if yoga is part of his fitness routine when I leave him alone in Baker Street, going to work at the hospital.

Sherlock snaps his magnifying lenses open, extracting it from its routine holding coat pocket, and, crouching on the dirty alley cobble stones, leans forward, over the young woman's body.

There are more elegant investigative moves as Sherlock nearly wraps his own body over the corpse to better reach the hints of clues he's finding in the mysterious murder.

I start wondering if this is as safe as I though. They are barely an inch apart from a romantic entanglement. Somehow that makes me uncomfortable, even if I can tell the virus was not the victim's direct cause of death, but a much more pernicious lethal blow to the head.

'Glad to finally see you in person, John', the inspector distracts me as we wait for Sherlock to do his work and dazzle us with the solution. I glance at the friendly inspector as if I had been far away in my head and didn't quite recognise him yet.

Feels like I've been _weeks_ away, not far away, I correct myself. Feels like decades have stormed past and yet it's still as familiar as breathing. I may have forgotten some officers' names (Sherlock will gloat) and my responses are still a bit rusty, but it's still an embedded part of my life.

'Yes, sorry again, Greg, for that video conference call when Sherlock spilled his acid bottle all over the table and I had to get up from it dripping on me, and you saw I had no trousers on. Sherlock assures me he was just clumsy, it was an accident. I made him clean up.'

'Yeah, about that. Why were you in the kitchen in your shirt and underwear? That's not much like you.'

'That was the second acid bottle Sherlock spilled all over the table that day. Turns out sulphuric acid will dissolve polyester blends into a giant round hole.'

Greg smirks. 'So, how was it? Being stuck with the big headed genius boy all this time? Drove you nuts?'

I look onto my best friend, now sniffing the victim's hair harder, impeded from the finer whiffs of fragrance by the face mask. _Eau de mort._

'Not at all. It was a privilege, Greg. I owe him dearly.'

The old inspector embarks in a near eye roll. He really can't imagine my luck. Before I can set the record straight, Sherlock straightened up above the victim. He turns straight to me, demanding my attention, ignoring everyone else. I uncross my arms, letting them fall limply at my sides.

Those brilliant grey-green eyes are alight like exploding supernovas. Feline shaped, made the more sticking by the chromatic compliment of the fabric covering half his features, they are the sole fulcrum of his senses, the anchoring of my attention, as his melodic voice explains in an uninterrupted stream of deductions relay:

'The victim is 35 to 39 years old. Natural brunette, stopped dyeing her hair blonde when lockdown began, decided to keep it that way now. Big change for a woman who has kept herself fit, groomed and made up with thick foundation as if she were half her age. Big appearance shifts are significant. An outward sign of changes she wanted to make in her own personal life, a visual reminder of sorts. Brought up in a conventional household, single child of a middle class family, boring office job she lived by with. No children, no close relatives left, but a man in her life for whom she kept her make-up routine. Bilingual judging by her frown lines, liked puzzles going by the frequent pen ink spots in her fingers from frequent pauses, was a bad cook as he presents multiple burn marks on her hands and forearms in multiple stages of healing. Her hands tell us much more than that, though. She's been practising for a musical bands competition, brass bands I'd say. She clearly plays the trumpet. Enlarged ribcage from continuous strain to her lungs and torso muscles, flattened fingertips on both hands, calluses too. Trumpet players have very distinct fingertips. She was studious but that's exactly how she was murdered. She was hit with the trumpet's mute. You can just about make out the shape and dimension of the mute, and trace evidence on her hair will confirm the metal's alloy.'

Lestrade interrupts: 'A trumpet? How do you know by looking at her fingers?'

The detective is also a good musician and he glares at the oblivious inspector. Frequent strain and repetitive effort, they leave a mark on the body, changing it to suit the personality inhabiting it, I'd explain it.

'There are no ongoing competitions', I say.

Sherlock quietens a bit. 'Good point, also answers the question of how she ended up in this alley, known to be a hotspot in trading illegal black market computer supplies, freshly nicked from unfortunate victims. She was brought here to acquire recording material to share her performances online. Unfortunately that was not the only supply she needed. Her right hand smells of petrol. Troubles with the car. They both got off, she tried to lift the hood and fix the engine. No good. She won't buy the webcam now, or the mic, or whatever else he thought would propel her to some online fame, making her good money he intended to sponge off her. They argue. He gets aggravated, grabs the mute from the car and whacks her from behind. He kills her. Most first blood seeps into the car boot, or the back seat. Can't leave her there, he drags her into the alley. No witnesses, as the old lady across the street naps every mid morning and the single father if two working from home next door home-schools his kids till lunchtime. You can tell with a glance to their front gardens alone. Going by the trace paint in the victim's clothes, the car is a smallish city car, compact, bad suspension. Like that one parked across the alley, empty, keys still in the ignition, noticed it the moment John and I got here. Go find out who owns that car, Lestrade, and you have your murderer before sunrise. Watch out, he's got a mean right hook...'

'Sherlock, it's the middle of the day.'

'Force of habit. You'll have your murderer by sundown.'

The detective inspector smiles and nods. 'That's great, Sherlock. Really good job, saved us a long afternoon. Guys, you heard the master, get the car and the mute!'

The crime scene resumes a buzzing energy as the investigators return to work. I hold out my left hand to help Sherlock from his stance legs wide over the dead body. He uses it too gently, attentive to my shoulder, because I used my left hand.

I look down on his hand in mine. The nitrile glove feels weird. It will take some getting used to.

'My apologies, John.'

'Sorry?' I look up to his face.

'Not you apologising to me, I meant the other way around, although I do appreciate how quickly you obliged there, John. No, I did you wrong by not calling you to study the corpse.'

I blink. 'The head is bashed in. Anyone can see she's dead and staying dead.'

His eyes glisten in shared morbid humour.

'Ah, good! You followed.'

'Brilliant deductions, by the way. You clearly have not lost your touch, and everyone here knows that now.'

'Elementary, my dear John', he minimises, in an affected manner. His eyes shinning bright are the full force of expression needed in his angular face. He's happy, content, wild – and it is addictive to watch.

'No one else saw it, no one else deduced it.'

'Let it be noted I'm not the one saying everyone else is an idiot.'

'Don't get clever! You must know you were amazing.'

'Was I?' He looks away. Calming down, sedated, satiated. 'Just drop it, John.'

'You don't think so?'

He sighs audibly, eyes trailed on the body bag being zipped shut.

'It doesn't feel enough, John. It never does...' Then catching sight of the inspector, 'Lestrade, give me another active case, you _need_ my help!' He makes similar demands aloud over my shoulder and walks past me, leaving me behind. I shake my head as the two detectives lock heads. It feels a bit like old times. _It's all changed; it's still the same._

It will take time getting used to.

But I'm glad we've come out this side, we get to try.

_**.**_


	67. Chapter 67

_A/N: Simple home life._

_Keep safe. Keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

Yawning widely, I come downstairs to the living room, my mind trapped in the anticipated rich, deep taste of a strong cuppa. Something to ease me into another Monday. They can be a bit vicious at times.

Of course, nothing is granted in 221B Baker Street.

I stop short at the door, blinking sleepily.

_Right. Cold cases._

Sherlock has evidently been up all night – after he vowed to me that he wouldn't – his erratic behaviour the more extravagant by the sleep deprivation he must be suffering by now.

They are just cold cases, but for Sherlock they are the only feeding his suffering brain can get to keep those mental cogs going. So he treats them as desperate, last port of recourse cases. It's oddly touching for the victim families to believe Sherlock saw so much potential in a case the police has let go cold, finding no viable suspects. I'm glad they see it that way too. I know Sherlock cares – sometimes so much he feels he needs to hide it or renegade his feelings. Scotland Yard thinks Sherlock does not fully care, but then if the cases were just mental puzzles to the detective, why would be bother offering the solution to the detective inspector? Praise alone doesn't cut it. I praise my flatmate more than enough. Sherlock likes the chance to put wrongs right, like all great heroes.

I just can't get his workings right now. Sherlock is currently standing on top of the battered coffee table, stretching on tip toes to reach a dark thin ribbon that has been draped all over the room. It stretches from the skull canvas on the black and white wallpaper wall to the ceiling lamp (how did he even reach the high ceiling?), flows from the fireplace mirror to the curtain railings, loops downwards around one of the thick hanging fabrics, circulates the back of Sherlock's armchair a few times, and criss-crosses maniacally in the centre of the room. Sherlock seems oblivious to the tangled mess of his own creation as he holds, in a dainty grip, the magnifying glass to the ribbon.

'Typewriter ribbon, John', he says, as if it explained all. He glances at me just as I shrug in incredulity. 'I'm reading the love letters imprints of a boring maid from the '30s in Coventry. She really shouldn't marry her lover. Auntie Mable is right, they are not a good match.' He drops that section of the ribbon and steps over the sofa, over the desk table and stands on his armchair. 'Lestrade found a mummified corpse walled in a chimney breast during house renovations. Well, when I say Lestrade...'

I yawn, uncontained.

'Do you need a hand?'

After all, he usually recruits me for these types of jobs. Which is fine by me, I like to help. I just resent the micromanaging; _that's not the correct way of holding a magnifying glass, John!_

_I was putting it away!_

'Perhaps later, John. A cup of tea and a piece of toast will do fine for now', he dismisses me generously.

He's lucky I'm making myself some.

_**.**_

By the time I finished showering, got dressed and I'm drying my hair with a towel, Sherlock has moved on to another case. I know this because the living room has changed again. The typewriter ribbon is still there, but no longer attracts the attention of the genius. Can't blame Sherlock. The real shocker is the assorted collection of about a hundred balloons rising up to the ceiling. Several twine pieces dangling vertically from the expanded rubber surfaces. All colours of the rainbow, some of them display printed messages – _30, 70, retired teacher, just married, it's a boy... _Sherlock seems to have amassed the whole stock of a greeting cards department.

'Solved that last case then?'

He shrugs a hand in the air; old news. 'Congenital heart deficiency. She died of natural causes, boring. The nephew had squandered his inheritance so was keen to feign the aunt alive to collect her modest income. He may have gone to the extreme of dressing up as her from a high window from time to time and when a secret admirer started to court her he played along. Hence the need to typewrite the letters. Any good old maid would have handwritten them lovingly. Maybe he liked his aunt and wanted to keep her close?' Sherlock finishes tentatively, glancing my way.

'Nah, sorry, too creepy for me.'

Sherlock does not retort. He glances fleetingly to the skull on the mantelpiece.

I open and close my mouth, without proffering a word. I'll save my questions to some other time.

'And the balloons?'

He agitates himself once more.

'Waiting for them to drop. A man's alibi depends on the helium loss rate. The balloon must stay up for exactly 1.3 days.'

I blink.

'You only needed one balloon.'

'Repeating the test to endure it's a fair test. The basis of a good scientific method!'

'But they are all different balloons!' I protest at last. 'That one has a rude shape!'

Sherlock follows where I'm pointing at. 'Oh, so it does. They all look the same after a while. John, the police cold case did not state the exact type of balloon on site. I'm covering all bases. My dirty laundry is outside my room.'

I look down on my wet towel. 'How come it's my time to do the laundry again?'

'I'm busy working hard, can't you see?' he asks in full antics mode. 'You are not the only one with an important job, you know?'

Right. This is an argumentation to avoid. Sherlock feels his vital work has been ignored, curtailed and belittled. I feel for him.

'I'll get the washing machine going. Just this once.'

_I'm not your housekeeper._

_**.**_

Baker Street's mayhem soon extends to the kitchen, I realise, as Sherlock has the nerve to barr me from it. A skinny detective standing between me and a cuppa, it wouldn't normally be a challenge. But I feel for the diligent and studious shape busied with something on the counter, his back turned to me.

I look back to the living room. The typewriter ribbon and the balloons still crowding the place.

'Don't, just drop it, John', he stops me before I fully ponder tackling the mess. It's like he's got eyes on the back of his head sometimes.

I suspect the shiny surface of the kettle, used as a mirror, though.

'What are you experimenting on now?'

'Popcorn, John. I'm determining the exact temperature and pressure needed to expand the corn kernels without burning them.'

'Don't tell me. Decades ago there was a murder in a cinema', I guess.

'Not even close.'

I can just about hear his smirk, the git.

'Perhaps in the microwave would be easier?'

'Nonsense, John! It'd blow up the metal components of my digital thermometer. Stop trying to sabotage the advancement of science!'

I chuckle.

'Does the advancement of science include the kettle in the near future?'

He truly ponders it.

'No. Go ahead.'

'Good.'

'Milk and two sugars, please.'

_**.**_

'Is this pizza?'

'Yes, John.'

'Is it edible?'

'Naturally. Why else would I have made it?'

'You made it?'

'Defrosted it.'

'Oh, yeah. I can see both the burnt bits and the ice.'

'Statistically it is perfectly cooked, John.'

'Science or cold case?' _That's the name of the game._

'None. John, look around you. I mean, really look.'

Suspicious, I do it nonetheless.

'You moved the telly two inches to the left', I joke.

'Three inches, but close enough!' he grins a real smile. I can't afford to be annoyed when I see that rare smile. 'Movie night, John! I'm a genius. I multitask. There is party decor, pizza and popcorn. It's what I could do with the cases I had on Lestrade's damned files. What do you say? I figure we can go for a marathon before you fall asleep. Your choice, John.'

He's an idiot. He'll be asleep on the sofa, drooling on my neck, before long.

He's a nice idiot. Once in a while Sherlock can really surprise you with his generosity.

'Budge over. We're in for a movie marathon.'

_**.**_


	68. Chapter 68

_A/N. Disclaimer: I do not condone John's driving ways ...But when you know Sherlock drove to Baskerville, it's so much more fun to think the unflappable genius let John chauffeur him for the first ten minutes, planning to lounge in his mind palace on the passenger's seat. Sherlock soon forced John to stop the engine, surrender the keys, and change seats, whilst John protested he "drives damn well fine!" and "there's absolutely no reason for your hands to be still shaking like that, didn't I tell you we had plenty of time at that train crossing?" I just love the patience a long suffering Sherlock can have, at times, with his best friend. In fairness, he does give stoic John plenty of grief..._

_Well, anyway. Weird tale. Partial lockdown scenario, I'm following London times and guidance here._

_Still the same old advice: keep safe. Whatever it is like for you, keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**1st.**_

Ruddy Sunday drivers! Driving at a leisure pace and acting as if only their vehicle can take up the one-way road. A yellow traffic light is as good as a red to them, and they have the nerve to honk at me! Sherlock says I'm prone to road rage, but that's absolutely not true. I'm not the one driving this rental as if— _Oi, you! Are you blind or what?!_

Another ruddy Sunday driver, can you imagine?

I drove trucks on a convoy in the war, as we were being targeted by a bunch of drunk insurgents with mortar shells. Now _that_ was driving awake!

I drove ambulances, and I know exactly just how narrow a gap needed to overtake the idiot blocking the road. I had lives to save, not going out for tea and a bun in a garden centre!

Wish they could just all get off the roads and let me drive!

How much longer must I bear this?

Oh, yeah. Brighton. Sherlock got asked to solve a case in Brighton.

It goes against our rules too.

He was there, sat at the kitchen table with me, as we agreed and I wrote them down.

Next he'll blame my handwriting as a way out of those rules.

_1\. Work cases from home as much as possible._

_2\. No direct contact with the clients. Or the criminals. Not even the victims. In fact, avoid everyone at 2 metres if possible._

_3\. Wear suitable personal protective equipment at all times. Report to doctor Watson if feeling unwell in any way, however insignificant it may seem. Report to doctor Watson – regardless._

_4\. Avoid long distance cases_. _Unless working from the flat. In which case, Sherlock points out, distance is not a factor._

There were a couple of other rules, but I don't recall them right now, and I can't make out the words I wrote down.

_Can't let Sherlock know, he'll get too smug about it._

Sherlock doesn't need to know I once reattached a soldier to his severed hand, reconnecting tendons, nerves, vascular links and tissue. Took me long hours in a battlefield hospital. The soldier made it and can use his hand nearly fully functioning – but I must say his own perseverance in physical therapy was vital. I just put the puzzle pieces back together.

That was before I got my shoulder blasted to Hades, though.

I would get my own very personal acquaintance with physical therapy. It worked for me too.

The handwriting notwithstanding.

_**.**_

Dead woman found on the beach, the bloated body washed ashore by the tides. What could have been a more mundane case to present Sherlock with? I didn't quite think he would take it. The detective holding the phone on loudspeaker glanced at my hours print out pinned to the fridge by a silly magnet and made his call instantly.

'I'll meet you there, inspector. I'm afraid John will be impossibly busy saving lives of those whose deaths would not be of interest to you or me.'

I couldn't blame my friend. I had just been slammed with consecutive days of double shifts. Luckily not on the "hot" wards, but trying to make a dent on the pile of delayed cases that the virus caused.

I'm fairly confident I won't be passing on the virus to the officers and consulting detective on the scene as I go to join them. Everyone at the scene – everybody but the third corpse just recently found – will be relieved to know.

Sherlock must be very pleased. His boring beach murder is now a promising serial killer's idea of summer fun.

I press down on the accelerator. Must get there before Sherlock does his deduction thing.

_**.**_

Once upon the city centre, it's easy to find the way to the cooler maritime winds that drift from the shore. The vast expanse of water greets me with its glacial cool levelness, stretching by the horizon.

The day is turning hot and oppressive. The juxtaposition with the open plains of the sea never fails to give me warped feeling of home.

Like sand, heat and vastness were my true element.

I try not to overthink it.

Sherlock is somewhere, prancing around a third body, deducing brilliant snippets of information about the killer.

I park with a swift swerve – someone on the road is upset, can't see why, drivers can be so tetchy on hot days – and exit the car by the crime scene delineation tape.

Hoping I'm turning up to the right party here.

I finally find him, a warm half smile gracing its way through my face as I see the usual wool coat flurry of brilliance and arrogance intertwined. Feels so familiar, as my gaze falls on the slim figure I missed so much.

I bang shut the car door, behind me, anticipating how I'm to surprise Sherlock, to jump on him with a curt joke, and storms will brood over his brow before he fully recognises me, stopping mid rant with a shy acknowledgement smile – yes, of course it would have been easier to check liver temperature to ascertain the time of death, rather than deduce the wall paint had dried on his sleeve from the time the victim had collapsed back at newly built 3 bedroom construction in the suburbs. He will blink and ask, confused, _John, is that you?_

_Always, Sherlock, you can't keep me away._

Biting down a smug glow that is too precious to carry, I start walking to the detective, currently the centre of attention and loving it.

My steps falter slightly as I see him offer a bright, rare _Sherlock-smile_ to someone standing nearby, someone in attendance by his side.

Gosh, I've been _replaced_ already?

Is that _Anderson_?

They are getting along like old chums.

I halt altogether, feeling a tang of insecurity spread over my intent.

_Sherlock doesn't need me._

In fact, he needs _an assistant_. He said that from day one. So he went and got himself a substitute for his every day one.

It was easy, considering. Even Philip Anderson would do.

No, don't be petty. Anderson is a highly qualified forensic scientist. I'm sure he's helping our mate, _the man who outshines and eclipses anyone else's intelligence and therefore needs no-one – oh, what a laugh! – and elects to be your friend and you should be grateful he's giving you any attention when he can sulk silently for days..._

Quiet, now. John Watson, you don't hold the monopoly of crime scene partnerships.

I guess you and Sherlock should have discussed partnership monogamy openly from the onset.

Jeez, that sounds _wrong_. Am I _jealous_? Really? Me? I have lots of friends and I'm happy for Sherlock and Anderson, it releases a few nights off for me, anyway.

Gosh, _I'm truly jealous_. What an act I am.

Sherlock's friendship is something so precious I don't like the prospect of sharing. I'm fine for a Christmas party or a night out on the pub. But crime scenes? _Sherlock, I though crime scenes were our thing._

_Oh, Christ. Anderson nearly hugs him, patting his backs right in front of everyone. Even Lestrade is grinning at them._

_Hell has officially frozen over._

Maybe I should just go home.

_**.**_

'John!'

In the end, it was like a train wreck. I just had to stick around and watch it unfold. So, in true Watson style, I prepared for battle with a couple of deep breaths and made my presence known.

I plaster my most beatific smile on a vacant expression and come closer.

'Yeah, it's me. Thought I would drive here. See how the case was going.' _See if you needed my help, which is now obvious you don't._

Okay, good start, John. Next time, though, _wait for the question to be asked of you._

In the meantime, hold your aces next to your chest.

'John.'

'That's my name.'

My smile is straining now.

Sherlock doesn't acknowledge that. He's scanning my face, my posture, looking for a clue on what he can feel is wrong in me.

Sherlock may be a world renowned genius who can identify types of ashes and tyre tread marks at a glance, but he can't see what is wrong with me.

'You drove here', he elects to say, completely out of subject. His deep grey eyes are brewing distant storms over the ocean waves, as he keeps deducing every crease in my clothes, or mysterious crumbs on my shirt.

I know there are no crumbs. I showered and changed before leaving the hospital and drove straight over. I didn't take a break, nor am I hungry now.

'Yes. Rental.'

Sherlock blinks and the spell is lost. He looks away.

Perhaps he was picking up the magnetic vibes of the previous drivers that rented the car. Their trace evidence must have brushed on me. Sherlock hates it when I take the tube because of that. As if I'm tainted with other people's lives.

I suppose it's a bit like dogs sniffing scents. They must get confused and worried too, just before they get that major whiff of their owner and know he's just fine, buried under the other scents.

Anderson quips at that point: 'We've got all we need from the body, right? Can we bag it up?'

The detective nods, without a glance back. He's too focused on me. His expression looks a bit broken.

Guilty, perhaps? _Stop it, John._

Don't gloat. His guilt won't last. He's got no idea.

_Sherlock is nobody's. He belongs to the world. Wild and carefree._

Lestrade quietly directs: 'Yes, bag it, Anderson. Have them look for the salt content on her lungs like Sherlock said. Our wonder-boy only solves the cases, we have to build up the evidence for the prosecution.'

Sherlock is still contest staring at me. I'm mirroring his determination.

I can tell Lestrade is getting antsy over our silence. He doesn't quite know what to do with his hands.

'John', Sherlock finally breaks the silence. 'It's the seaside. Care for a stroll and an ice cream?'

I smirk dangerously. His grey eyes narrow.

'It's too damned hot for that coat, you'll get a sunstroke, mate.'

Some weight lifts off his expression, as if he recognised something quintessentially _me_ in the advice. No, it's common sense.

He flips up the collar of his long coat and waits for me to start walking before he follows me.

_**.**_

'Lestrade thought it was a people smuggling case. Hence his insistence I take the case. I'm afraid he got it wrong. Scuba diving school owner was cutting costs by using a less than optimal oxygen percentage to his air tanks. That day the wife asked for a divorce and the house they shared. It's all in their social media feeds. He cut costs too far, the three hen do young British women of foreign descent suffered difficulties breathing underwater after a while. He tried saving them but ultimately panicked and cut off the air tanks and pulled the fins and lead belts off them. It's all there in the lividity patterns, as Anderson pointed out. Easy peasy. Lestrade will nick the instructor before the divorce lawyer even files the papers. Who knows, maybe his wife has got a soft spot for bad boys and it brings them back together?' Sherlock smirks my way.

I'm looking ahead, feeling a bit blank. Shocked.

Hurt. Confused. Overwhelmed.

Tired. So tired.

'Great job, Sherlock.'

'You're not pleased', he notes.

'Sorry, what?' I turn my head to face the detective. He looks so young and immature every time he tries to talk of feelings.

I'm not particularly fond of the subject either.

He expects me to guide him along. Surely it's too much this time, that I must make sense of what he's done and explain it to him.

I abruptly sit in a sun warmed wooden bench, the paint slowly peeling off.

In the back of my mind I make a mental note to wash my hands, you don't know who has sat here before you did.

I know who seats next. Sherlock; his puppy eyes still studying every micro freckle on my face, the myriad of wrinkles flowing through my skin.

'You are upset with me, John. I fail to see why.'

_Yeah. I know._

I shake my head.

'You solved the case. Didn't even need me.'

_Don't. Sound. Bitter. John._

He breaks eye contact and looks away to a passing jogger.

'Yes. I did. And you saved patients' lives.'

I shrug.

'Ordered medicines, oxygen, tests, tried to label their illnesses. They do the hard work themselves, Sherlock.'

'You can hardly expect me to believe that, doctor', he mocks openly. 'You don't believe that yourself.'

I faced him straight on, indignant. _Maybe that was exactly what he was playing at. _I need to moralise: 'I'm not all powerful, Sherlock, I'm just a doctor. It's what I studied to be. Hardly the god given gift you have. So use it. Invite Anderson when I'm busy, or all the time for all I care, but use it, don't waste it.'

I get up and leave.

Road rage. I'm hell bent on some raging right now.

'John, Lestrade will stick around for the pathologist. Will you give a ride back to London?' the question is gunned at my back.

Was that vulnerability and worry in his voice?

'Yes, of course', I bark back. It would be impolite to refuse.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	69. Chapter 69

_A/N: In human life there is a fundamental need to be useful by means of work and community. We equate our self-worth in productive terms and this virus situation has left so many of us feeling unjustly cut off, at times. I guess that's where this piece comes from._

_(Or I just wanted to be mean to the boys. Hopefully it ends well for them. I don't do this often.)_

_Keep strong. -csf_

* * *

_**2nd.**_

'John, there's a cyclist up ahead.'

'I can see that', I retort flatly, turning the wheel.

Sherlock grabs the car door handle so hard his knuckles turn white.

'Don't look at me, look at the road!' he snaps. There's almost a panicky tone to the detective's voice. _That's so silly._

'I saw the cyclist', I state tersely.

'John, red light... Red light. Red, red!'

'Where?'

Car tyres screech and horns honk on the road. _Like I say, some folks can't drive._

'Never mind.' Sherlock shudders. 'We passed it now.'

'There was no red light, you're putting me on!'

He shakes his head silently, vowing his truthfulness.

I wonder if he's coming down with something. His face is a bit pale.

'I'm a great driver, Sherlock, I'll have you know. No one ever fell asleep on Kandahar's truck convoys with me at the wheel. There's plenty of people to swear by that.'

'Indeed.'

I break into a halt suddenly, just before a real red light. Sherlock strains forward heavily against his seatbelt. _He was distracted, I bet._

Looking at the consulting detective I wonder if he's been overworking, as he seems a bit dazed.

'Can I drive?' he asks, quietly, meeting my eyes. 'Please?'

_Oh, great! He's at it again, like I can't drive or something!_

I snap the ignition key to cut the engine and throw him the key. He catches it eagerly, looking relieved, in a very misplaced way. I snatch open the driver's door, get out, walk around the car. Inside, Sherlock appropriates the driver's seat by sliding over the gear box elegantly. Bloody flexible git. What was he, afraid I would change my mind midway?

I get inside the passenger's side, carefully glancing at Anderson on the back seat.

Yes, Anderson is tagging along with us. He needed a ride too. Ruddy awkward, I tell you. He couldn't let go of Sherlock Holmes. Said something about a burst water pipe at his flat, that a neighbour would have alerted him about; likely story. I said we wouldn't take two seconds to get to London. Serves Anderson right. With Sherlock driving it's at least two hours. He doesn't know that yet, of course, so he's not looking all that concerned.

_I don't know what he's looking like._

Philip Anderson is gripping tightly his seatbelt by his chest, with both hands. He very carefully avoids my inquiring gaze. _Funny fellow, Anderson._ It's hard for him to act natural when he's appreciative of a favour like a lift.

Cars behind us blare their horns, urging us on, but Sherlock takes his time adjusting the mirrors and backing out the seat to accommodate his long legs. Finally he turns on the engine with a soft, pleasant purr. He glances at me with a complicit smirk and sets the car going three seconds before the green light is gone.

_That's my mate. _He won't have other drivers tell us what to do. I smile proudly at Sherlock's vindictive reaction to the cars protesting behind us and almost forget Sherlock's ultimate injurious choices in Brighton. _Almost_. I still hold on to the indignity. _Sherlock swapped me for Anderson._

I cross my arms in front of me. Steaming anger seeping away to be replaced with empty sadness. Hurt. Loneliness.

At the crime scene, those two were the greatest of pals. The way Sherlock was grinning earlier, only the best locked room mysteries and gruesome murders can usually elicit that "oh, it's Christmas" grin.

I didn't expect Sherlock to break the loyalty I so much admired in him.

_He grinned at Anderson. Truly happy too._

Well, I hope the two of them are happy together. Maybe Mrs Hudson can let 221C to dear Philip, so he can be at Sherlock's beck and call constantly.

Anderson won't last a week, between chemical explosions in the middle of the night, microwaved eyeballs (he really went and done it, one day), and constant summoning to fetch a pen or a beaker.

I turn my face to the window, letting that cold air wind swirling in cool my head a bit.

_I hope Sherlock hits a lot if potholes on the road before London._ The forensic technician is looking a bit green around the gills as it is.

Besides, what about next time Sherlock needs help because the suspected criminal running away from us has slipped down from the rooftop and fell from a considerable height, breaking a leg? Anderson is not a qualified medic. He's qualified in dusting for prints and bagging evidence. Things Sherlock can do very well on his own. It's not like the two complement each other... And the next time some killer wants to gun down Sherlock? Who will be there to fire first?

_I will. _I'll stay. _To save Sherlock from himself._

I turn my face to Sherlock and glare daggers at him.

He's got the indecency of looking puzzled.

_**.**_

John is not acting much like himself. Pent-up tension lines his brow, in a pained, betrayed way. Sherlock's actions? Possible. Upgraded to _probable._ The duration of that tension wrinkle, embedding itself in the fair skin, is the start of a headache grounded in the contours around John's honest eyes. Started at the hospital, then. _Lost a patient_. No, not loss. Loss comes with an air of defeat that washes through his gestures and words for days. _A fight, then. A difficult battle. _A cancerous tumour made worst, an infection rampant in a body, a broken bone ignored until it caused internal injuries. Medical assistance sought too late. Perhaps a mix of any of those scenarios. Something John felt as senseless destruction, avoidable damage. He was confronted with a sentiment of being powerlessness, compounded for hours. In this vulnerable frame of mind, John then decided to come assist me; _longing for a change of scenery, desiring a distraction, needing self-affirmation through helping?_ Sherlock doesn't know. From the moment John found Sherlock everything went south. And this Sherlock cannot explain logically. He does not worry, though, for he knows his doctor.

John is his lodestone, the entity that can focus the detective's hyperbolic mind and turn into a symphony the chaotic inputs of all the different calls hacking away in his mind.

This is only made possible for John seems to always return to his magnetic north. No matter the short temper bursts (quite a few), there is something stable, something deep in John's core, that is his centre. Like a pendulum in its concentric advances John may stray a bit, he always returns to his centre. His constancy and his core are basal, defining characteristics of doctor John Watson.

Sherlock just needs to wait. _And try not to lash out before that, if at all possible._

Sherlock will always wait for John. It's inscribed as a message in his DNA now.

_**.**_

Sherlock was acting all quiet driving the car as if it was a lazy Sunday morning, but I know him better than that.

'Cyclist, Sherlock.'

'What? Where?'

I lied. On purpose. I'm cranky enough, and two can play the game.

'Never mind. You passed him now. Give more space next time.'

'But I didn't see— _John.'_

It's not the friendliest or the most patient of glances he gives me. I guess it's the beginning of the end of our friendship. _Making way for Anderson._

The forensic man will give the consulting detective the one thing Sherlock requires most; constant praise.

That's why Sherlock chose to adopt Anderson of all people, right?

Anderson is happy enough with the arrangement.

I snuggle back on the seat and try to close my eyes to the road passing us by in a blur of tarmac grey and roadside verges green, the wariness from those long shift hours weighing on me.

Anderson's voice floats from the back seat: 'Sherlock, I still don't get it. Why the scuba diver instructor?'

I exhale tiredly. _That's not how you ask it._ You must goad Sherlock into telling it to you. It's what he wants the most, right now, to tell you his brilliant deductions, but if you make it easy on him he feels isolated in his genius. He feels misunderstood, in a sea of dead brained goldfish swimming lazily around the fish bowl, never truly looking out through the glass into the bigger world. Judging him, furthermore. That's his knee jerk reaction still, I'm afraid. The freak, the damaged human with the genius intellect.

Show him you really care about the answer and that you are trying hard to understand. Show him you are clever, and challenge him. Put yourself out there with him, don't leave him alone on a pedestal.

_Don't leave him lonely._

Anderson won't listen to my mental pleas; of course, he can't.

Sherlock huffs and starts a cutting diatribe on the scuff marks' height on the second woman's diving suit, and the effects of an irregular object applying pressure on 43 types of expanded rubber surfaces in cold water.

_It's going to be a long journey to London._

_**.**_

'What is wrong with him, John?' Anderson bites out as I help him carry his several forensic gear cases from the car boot down the path to the block of flats.

Instinctively I fall on my default Sherlock protection mode.

'Don't know what you are on about.' And I glare threateningly.

_Ingrained reaction._

'He was downright rude to me with his 43 types of rubber scuffing! No one else saw that underneath the seaweed!'

I bite my tongue. It really was a crass miss.

Anderson carries on, regardless. 'And the way he spoke to you when you turned down Chinese take away? He wasn't like that at the crime scene, John... Is he always liked that? Hot and cold? I mean at 221B? What is he like as a flatmate?'

_Asking for a friend?_ I ball my fists around the case handles.

Anderson's righteous anger is dissipating into adoration once again.

'I guess incredible genius is a difficult thing to understand.'

'You two got on like a house on fire at the crime scene, why ask me?' I snap, at last.

The technician looks at me funny. I ignore him. And unclench my fists. And will my heart rate to go back down.

'John, you get to _feel_ his genius every day, you are so lucky.'

_Great. He's drooling again._ Anderson has no idea what it is like to work with Sherlock for as long as I have. To be his friend, his support.

To know he had your back every single time you needed him.

'He was all smiles at you!' I shout, all temper lost.

The echo of my words on the warm stale air makes me flinch; were those really my words?

Anderson chuckles. _I could punch him._

'Was that before or after he kept addressing me as "John"?'

My accelerated breath catches. 'What did you just say?'

Time comes to a standstill.

'You heard me', he dares to challenge me. Not a good time for that. _I'll punch you right here, right now..._

Too many witnesses.

'I wasn't even there!'

'Force of habit, I take it... Do you – really – not know? Oh, you don't, do you?'

Anderson is both amused and demure, all of a sudden.

'What?' I bark.

'Sherlock calls everyone "John" once he gets lost in his head. When he's looking for clues at a crime scene, deducing to Lestrade at Scotland Yard, he even called Molly Hooper from the morgue "John" more than once that I've witnessed. It's like a running joke now. There are active pools at the Yard on how many times more Sherlock will call someone "John" versus "idiot". Your name keeps winning. It's still annoying, but slightly less insulting than constantly being called an idiot...'

I exhale a long breath and rub my eyes.

Oh, Sherlock. In a way I was there all along. _Not forgotten in the least._

Could there be a more fitting reference to a missing friend than feeling as if I'm around all the time?

Like a child with an imaginary friend or something.

Okay, so maybe it's not all that healthy, this co-dependency, but—

_It warns my heart._

_I missed him too._

I have managed to avoid calling my patients Sherlock, though. Mostly because I'd suffer a mini heart attack every time addressing a patient on a ventilator, for instance. I won't transport Sherlock's ghost to a hospital ward. As for healthier, sprained ankles and runny nose patients, they would object surely. Sherlock makes it look so easy...

I should appreciate there are no anecdotal evidence so far of Sherlock addressing mangled corpses as "John".

'Alright', I admit at last, handing Anderson his cases, before turning on my heels and walking stiffly back to the car. _I'm on a mission._

'Thanks for the ride!'

Yeah, whatever. I'm busy. I wave Anderson off.

_I owe the git an apology._

He's been a great friend. I got jealous. I was tired and got a bit worked up.

'Chinese, you said?' I bark as I enter the car.

Sherlock's face lights up. He scans me up and down, before humming satisfied. He turns the engine on, apparently intent on the road alone.

'Time to get some food into both of us. Can't live of thin air, a good doctor has told me', he adds, slyly.

But it's not enough. I need to come clean.

'I'm sorry, mate. I was wrong.'

'Cyclist, John.'

His interruption derails me.

'What? You're the one driving!'

There is no cyclist, by the way. Unless he means the one coming in the opposite direction, a long way away from us.

'The cyclist, John. Identify theft con artist, but he downsized as a rich banker, because he was clearly a real life Tour de France cyclist. Anyone can tell that much by the muscle development of his quadriceps!'

I blink. This is how Sherlock goads me into asking him for the glorious deductions he's made.

'I want to hear that, but first I need to explain that I acted like an idiot.'

'Just drop it, John. I witnessed no such behaviour.'

I grin. He does too.

_Yes, that clever grin._

I let the lie pass unchallenged.

'Tour de France... By his quadriceps alone, really?'

'I'll explain it over extra dumplings, John.'

_**.**_


	70. Chapter 70

_A/N: Apologies over the delay. I had ran out of ideas!_

_Still in lifting lockdown London setting. It's very limiting in a narrative, and just as much in real life. But we try to keep safe._

_Still not British, a writer, or a hero. -csf_

* * *

_**One.**_

The client letters had stopped during lockdown. Email inbox was permanently frozen. Sherlock had violently smashed another phone against the wall because his brother had taken up spying on him again. Anyway, there were no missed texts or calls when Sherlock got a new phone delivered. At least not the kind he was looking for, with cases, mystery, intrigue, scandal. Nothing that would make the detective tick.

If not for the meagre supply of cold cases DI Lestrade provided sporadically to the consulting detective, there would have been one very bored, possibly dangerously so, Sherlock Holmes at 221B.

As I know my friend well, I saw it hurt him. Even if he tried to hide his reaction out of wounded pride. He felt useless, kept from doing the one thing that he used to define him, his God given talent to solve cases. Sherlock suffered, as stoically as he could. Being ignored, superfluous, dismissed in a world grappling with an unprecedented virus. This was a perfidious enemy he could not defeat, one that did not fight battles with honour, did not defy Sherlock's wits, and made hostages of us all.

In sharp contrast, my hours as a medical professional multiplied greatly, because I could not push away my first calling. I was needed in Hospital, if not in Baker Street, so I took up as many shifts as I could handle. I was making a difference.

I was the blatant contrast to Sherlock's swamped inactivity, making it stand out the more.

Sherlock soon felt betrayed and forgotten. And I could not forgive the world for doing that to my best friend.

Alright, sure, there were pallid attempts at contact with snippets of cases for the consulting detective. There was a woman who found out the most hurtful way that her husband was a bigamist, although he did try to go to one house during the day under the covert of being a night shifts worker, while during the night he was at the other house, supposedly recuperating from the day shifts. He did not work at all, in fact. All the pretence came to an ending when he caught the virus and became bed bound, as he could only have the one bed to isolate in. The client letter we got, Sherlock and I did not take up on it. We had to explain to the second wife we are not assassins for hire. She apologised, she said she had got her internet tabs mixed up. Lestrade was not pleased as we forwarded the awkward details to him, just in case.

There was an email over a missing cat – turned out he was up a tree on the back yard. It wasn't a difficult case to solve. By that time, Sherlock was willing to take up any scrap of mystery to keep sane. The little girl was very pleased and said Mr Holmes was the best detective ever, which greatly pleased Sherlock for the whole of three seconds.

Don't get me wrong; there were plenty of passionate crimes during full lockdown. They just tended to be less creative, or preventable, more of the mad murderous rush sort. There were plenty of neighbours suspecting domestic violence across the street, as most country turned to impromptu surveillance tactics from behind curtains in living rooms, especially as they grew tired from the telly entertainment. There were scams that took advantage of vulnerable people too. Crime, as an entity, shifted its ugly face, but hardly went underground. It never left our streets and neighbourhoods entirely.

It just got crass, uninteresting, and beneath the talent of Sherlock Holmes.

Mycroft, Sherlock's big brother and creepy commander of London's CCTV cameras, once sent hours of footage to the detective. I thought that was a great idea. It kept the younger brother's wits together as he deciphered crimes by the slightest hints, and forwarded the information to the police.

Then I found out the two brothers were both watching footage from within a certain radius in London, of some blocks I think, and competing for who spotted and solved the most misdemeanours in a certain time frame. Like a board game. _It's not decent._

Sherlock won, by the way, because he halted the game when he spotted a murder about to happen and managed to prevent it. Mycroft denies he even saw it, and the rules of the game were petty crimes only, so _he_ won by 23 counts for carrying on. Lestrade begged not to be swamped by everything from badly parked cars to youth occupying shut down retail premises to share some alcohol.

Throughout all the rounded, caring support each of us tried to provide to the languid detective whose fire was being extinguished by lack of proper mental stimulation – according to his own words – there were only two consolations for the desolate detective.

One was his love of science and experimentation. That never truly stopped, although the supply of body parts from the morgue, of exotic plant pollens from the Kew Gardens, or the lending of that High Pressure Liquid to Gas Spectrometry machine that never came through, were halted ruthlessly by the pandemic.

Sherlock kept his mental cogs going on a diet of science and small cases, like a foraging detective in times of difficulty had to.

The other big thing that gave Sherlock's obsessions a magnetic north was his flatmate. _That means me_. He obsessed a bit over me. My safety. My habits. My _endless source of mystery_; according to the detective himself, at his most poetic moments.

_He says things like that to mess with me._

Why would I be in the league to compete with the vicious murderers and con artists of the past, I can't say. I definitely did not become a master criminal to entertain Sherlock Holmes.

_Not this time. _If there's ever a second peak coming... it just might save London from being blown up to smithereens.

No, just kidding. The day I turned to evil, Sherlock would lose all interest in his flatmate.

_Or worse, he would follow me over to the dark side._

But no, let's not be silly. I'm not that important in Sherlock's life. A conveniently close by distraction, I think.

That was, at least, a role I could fulfil somewhat.

_**.**_

'John, there was a letter on the post, early this morning. Mrs Hudson left it on our steps and shouted upstairs for me to get it. Our landlady is a bit lazy, John.'

_Social distancing and a bad hip, mate. _Unlike the sprawling detective on the sofa. Somehow he managed to peel himself off the leather cushions and go fetch his letter. He probably tried calling me first, but my phone had been negligently left downstairs.

I rub my face tiredly, interrupting my tired march to the shower.

'A letter? What are you so happy about?'

'Stop yawning and look, really look!' he snaps at me, ruthlessly awake himself, pressing a portion of crumpled paper to my chest. _Hey, he got up fast, to stand in my way and keep me from my shower._ 'Notice the atrocious handwriting, John! Even worse than yours. Possibly the subject was not exposed to many years of formal education, yet, behold the content of the sentences. It is structured, logical and polite, indicating a perfectly functional member of society.'

'What does it say?' I squint to the very scrawled handwriting and wonder how Sherlock read it. Maybe I'm still too sleepy.

'There's time for that before your old sweat scent overpowers the kitchen, worry not.' _The git!_ 'Last night was uncommonly warm and you suffered through it with uncommonly vivid dreams, almost nightmares, that marred dark wells under your eyes. John, I will sequester your duvet until the warm weather subsides. Your internal temperature is already too high to necessitate a duvet and statistically more likely to bring you bad dreams.'

I smirk, amused. 'I'm quite sure you just told me I'm hot', I assure him.

He narrowly misses the innuendo. 'Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Do not distract me, however, from that letter. The ink comes from a common black ink pen. It's cheap and chemical. Bought at a supermarket, possibly in bulk, not much help there. The paper is meant for a printer. Standard thickness, whitewashed, no water marks, a bit dampened, inference; the package has been open a while. It also suffers from being commonplace. Even we have such paper on our printer, John! The samples match! The envelope is standard, the stamp was bought at a petrol station and it was posted in the nearest post box, thus showing buying the stamp was the last gesture before mailing the letter. It was premeditated, John!'

'Most letters are', I state calmly. 'How do you know about the petrol station?'

'There was a particular whiff to the stamp when I unpeeled it to test the saliva. It turns out it wasn't licked. The sender dipped a finger in tea – tea, John! – and whetted the back of the stamp with the ill conceived, automatic machine dispensed beverage, before sticking it on!'

Well, no one in their right mind wants to lick stamps anymore in these times, Sherlock. I can understand Sherlock's anonymous pen pall.

I watch the detective's antics grow as he furiously paces the tiny kitchen. He's going to get bruises from bumping against the chairs and counter if he keeps at it.

'Surely the content of the letter comes first to your analysis of the client's habits.'

That sets Sherlock off, apparently. He stops, looming over me, as he dictates, expressionless: 'Writen by a right handed person with good formal education but poor calligraphy. Possibly suffering from a degenerative disease on their left hand as traits of the letters' inclination indicates they would in fact be left handed by nature. Accident or cultural pressure had them take up the pen with the right hand. Did you know some cultures regarded left-handed people as devilish? No, don't answer, it's not important. Laborious writing, but little hesitation. A person of decisive nature. All the O's loops were closed, denoting morality and structure. The size of the letters was economic, but readable, so a modest nature. The heading was spaced perfectly for someone with good experience at writing letters, of a formal nature. The pen nib dug firmly into the paper, denoting excitement and a romantic nature. Could be a woman, but the style is somewhat short and direct. Most likely a man, a man can be equally fanciful.'

'I think you just managed to insult both sexes in one go.'

'I've no time for that. Statistics, John, it couldn't really bother me less what gender anyone acts like! Now, the stamp.'

'What about the stamp?'

'Posted not far from Baker Street. The sender could have walked over, pushed through the letter box and saved himself 61p. Something kept this person at bay.'

'Yeah. The fact that you're always looking out the window. He didn't sign it, Sherlock. Hardly anonymous if you see him drop off his letter...'

Sherlock smirks, and suddenly turns around to fill the kettle.

'Then there's the letter itself, John.'

'Wait, you're making tea today? That's rare.'

He ignores me, asking me calmly: 'Will you read it to me?'

I look down on the sprawling. 'I can try...' I state dubiously.

"_Dear Mr Sherlock Holmes, you don't know me and I wish to remain anonymous, if at all possible. I have followed your cases online with mild curiosity for years now. Doctor Wilson's blog interests me for some fanciful reading—"_

'Who's Wilson? Your new sidekick?' I mutter, annoyed. Sherlock smirks. This happens more frequently than I like to admit.

"—_but it was your monograph on light reflection and refraction on dull surfaces that really got my attention. I should commend you for your intriguing studies. As to the nature of my letter, I would like to request your assistance with the most bizarre incident I have experienced in a long time. Mr Holmes, I am not a fanciful person, far from it. Yet, yesterday as I cleared up the attic chasing up some damp stain on the bedroom wall below, I found the most extraordinary mask. Some tribal, wooden object embellished with feathers and still bright colours in an old trunk where my great grandfather had collected memories from his travelling abroad. I had only known it to have been full of old paper accounts of foreign societies and cultures he encountered as an explorer. Upon further inspection, I came to find a damaged corner to the trunk, caused no doubt by that nasty rainwater leak rotting the old wood. I believe the mask tumbled out of a secret compartment, a false bottom fitted to this trunk."_

I take the cup of tea Sherlock hands me, noticing he keeps one for himself too. The detective keeps dictating from memory:

_'If at all convenient, I would ask you to investigate this finding, and do what you will with it and your conclusions once you are done. I shall leave the aforementioned findings at your door during the course of the next night and request of you not to try to identify me, as I would prefer to remain – Your Anonymous Client.'_

'Tonight?' I repeat.

'We are to do a stake out, John.'

'On our own front door?' I grimace.

'Highly convenient, don't you agree?'

I frown. 'Can we trust this person?'

'Now you are just pushing me to take this case, John', Sherlock retorts with a defiant smirk, and whirls away to snatch the bathroom before me.

I stand by the kitchen sink, watching the water vapour slowly dissipating from the insufferable cuppa Sherlock made me.

A tribal mask and some old papers. Could they be the case Sherlock Holmes needs to recuperate his mojo?

I have another look at that letter still in my hand, musing over the uneven, almost childish, handwriting.

Almost checking on a further sip of horribly burnt tea, I put down the letter and hurry to rinse both cups, and set wrongs right in this bitter world of ours, by making two palatable cuppas for us.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	71. Chapter 71

_A/N: No A/N at this time. Can't think of anything to state here. -csf_

* * *

_**Two.**_

I spent the day with Sherlock, watching him grow exponentially tetchy, as he got better acquainted with his sudden client that taunted the detective with a request to keep anonymous. Or should I better say, with the too few, too vague hints the client left behind. Sherlock was not bound to tolerate such inversion of roles for long. As the detective in charge, Sherlock was the brattish, demanding, extraordinary diva to be accounted for, not the client that had worked his way through the detective's curiosity.

The mystery surrounding a concealed identity was quickly overtaking the promise of wonder and awe in an uncommon and antique object to be posted to us.

At this point I had to admit expressly that if that mask did not turn up, and it did not yield mystery and myth within, the disappointment alone could break the detective, doing him irreparable damage.

Sherlock was so strung up for a case at this point that this client's taunt was hitting epic proportions in the restless investigator's mind. _Sherlock does have a tendency to obsess. I should know._ It only came as a surprise that the obsession started even before the appraisal of the object-centric mystery that had yet to be delivered. The more Sherlock spent his day investigating lost societies, strange cults and twisted cultural habits of old, the more I worried the object coming to our hands was going to fail to match the expectations by default of an over-achiever's imaginative mind. And I mean Sherlock's. _I'm known to be easily impressed._

Defending my mate, I rushed to blame the anonymous hero-to-villain client that successfully picked up Sherlock's mood, and could so easily crush it down again.

'Sherlock you could focus on another case, you know? Take your mind off it?' I try to divert the eager monomaniac from his research in open encyclopaedic volumes, multiple tabs on a laptop, and a bunch of electronic junk pilled on the living room table.

'There is no other case', he answers. Curt, nasty, _vulnerable_.

'Have you checked your inbox?'

He positively glares at me, like a kid being asked to do homework during the summer holidays. As if I couldn't grasp the magnitude of the pull he was suffering.

'My inbox has not pinged in 36 hours and 16 minutes, John. There is absolutely nothing else out there for me, John!' he wails, and huffs too, for good measure. Lord forbid he be all dramatic...

I drop my book – who was I kidding? I haven't been focused enough to read a full page for days – and come closer, shortening the physical distance between us. I really, really want to reach out to the isolated genius.

'What have you got there then?' I try to sound cheerful. He blasts me with a dark look, but won't ever keep me from reach – he will do that to all and sundry, but not to me – so he dutifully answers.

'Spy cameras, pressure pads, warning lights, and trip wire type laser beams. John, I'm catching this client red handed!'

I blink.

'What if he's just... shy?'

Fair enough, could just as easily be a woman we're discussing. But Sherlock and I have settled for the male pronouns as a temporary generalization, to make it easier overall.

'What's he hiding?' Sherlock counters, shrewdly.

'Maybe he just can't afford us. Lots of people are struggling right now. I can't possibly invoice an anonymous client, can I?'

Sherlock rebels with the well fed soul of the upper class.

'Oh, I've got money, I don't care to be paid! Why are supermarkets, petrol stations and landladies such mercenaries? I can do without being paid, and so should they!' He waves his hands about in artistic exasperation, but suddenly squints and jumps forward to stand an inch from my face. I hold my ground, I'm an army captain; luckily I remember that just in time. 'I lay down the rules, John. Not the client. That's what is at stake. So tonight I will be ready, I will catch the client on the act, at the drop off. I will have that front step rigged, and you and I will be occupying that vacant flat across the road, waiting on his arrival. We will catch him.'

'We are waiting across the road? How are we even getting in?'

'I've got the keys, John. I have got the keys to half of London, in fact', he informs me, nonchalant.

I sigh, defeated. 'Fine, we'll do it your way. Ignore me away, study your literature and get all prepared. I'll be sitting on our stairs, talking to Mrs Hudson, if you need me.'

He rolls his eyes at me, in superiority. 'Discussing the latest episode of Corrie, are we?'

I give him a glare and leave him alone, as he so much wishes. Sherlock couldn't discuss a soap opera even if he tried.

_**.**_

Never felt so weirdly homesick as now, watching our homely flat with warm diffuse glow lamps behind the tall windows, as I sit uncomfortably on the hard floorboards of an empty modern flat across the Street.

We've been here for hours. Night has descended upon the street. London is eerily quiet, but that's familiar these days. _It still puts me on edge._

Sherlock keeps grunting under his breath, his temper worsening with every passing half hour.

A sudden electronic noise rouses us both. It's my phone, ringing. That got my heart racing and my blood pumping.

'Mrs Hudson?' I take the call, on loudspeaker.

'John, dear, there's a box sitting here by the door. I think it's for Sherlock. _Or Sherlock's. _See that you don't forget it as you come back home from your break-in across the road, will you?'

Nothing phases our landlady. Meanwhile Sherlock's eyes widen. He's been duped.

The awaited case has been enigmatic ally delivered. Not through the front door, we didn't see anyone, Sherlock's traps did not get set off.

The detective dashes off in a sprint. I try to politely hang up the call and follow him just as fast. Awake. Alive.

My cramping joints are less than compliant in following the detective rushing across the street. Luckily traffic as long died down in London. I watch my friend kick his circuit box of tricks and get his key out, unlocking the front door. Mrs Hudson is waiting by her flat's door, looking concerned. At the detective's feet is an open cardboard box with a yellow mask inside.

_It's been delivered._

_**.**_

That Sherlock is so incensed that he insists on speed dialling Lestrade for backup is a surprise even to me.

That the inspector is there in under five minutes flat, is a sign of how much the fatherly detective inspector cares for the Baker Street investigator, _or how much he still fears Sherlock will go off the rails one day._

Sherlock is still manipulating feverishly the conjured mask when our friend's police car turns the corner. I appreciate the foresight of the old inspector for having the emergency lights on, but no sound. We don't need to attract even more attention right now. I'm sure Sherlock and I are already the preferred spectacle of the lockdown-bored neighbours.

The detective hands me the mask briskly just as Greg parks the car. I take the curious object in my hands and tilt my head, observing it carefully.

_So this is what it takes to fully grasp Sherlock's attention?_

A concave piece of wood, painted mostly in ochre yellow and earthy browns, covered in a crackling smoky varnish. Two opening slits for the eyes, one for the mouth. The painted on expression of a witch doctor of sorts.

It takes a big effort not to try it on. I mean, not until Sherlock dispels the idea that it could be coated with poison on the inside, for instance.

As far as I can tell this could have been an ordinary stage prop, a child's toy, or a souvenir from an exotic journey. But does it really hold a proper mystery in its dry wood casing?

Sherlock has been spending his time showing the inspector the letter. He looks excitable and tense, but throughout keeps to the recommended social distancing, this proving to all of us that he still keeps his wits about.

'Vanished in the thin air!'

'What will you have me do, Sherlock?'

'Go find this intruder that mocks me, Lestrade!'

The older man seems amused. 'I'll get right on it. Let me just have a quick word with John.'

Sherlock huffs and heads back inside, and up the stairs to the flat, in a proper sulk.

At Baker Street's front door, Lestrade leans closer to me. He clears his throat and asks, carefully, in a quiet voice:

'John, didn't you once say you could write with both your hands?'

I nod, suppressing a smirk. 'Yeah, I'm left handed and I bust my left shoulder in Afghanistan, remember? I had to make my way with my right hand.' I look the inspector right on before I add: 'Funnily enough, my right hand handwriting is similar but not entirely the same. Sherlock would say something about predominant musculoskeletal ligaments or something...'

'John, did you write that letter?' the inspector squints right at me.

I shrug. _Busted_.

'Yeah, I did. Sherlock needed a case', I admit.

_Can't lie; Greg having asked politely and all._

It's a devious scheme, sure, but Sherlock wouldn't take just any case, too slumped in his own depression. I had to trick him into taking a care that was exactly what he needed to act like himself.

I had once found this mask in a charity shop. I thought it alluring in some odd way, as if it carried a secret past anxiously waiting for release. Before I could show it to Sherlock he went deep with some other case, a real case, and I ended up joining that investigation and forgetting all about my purchase. It lay gathering dust on a box, atop my wardrobe. The same box I have down here tonight.

'So, it's all a lie?'

There's anger in his words now. The inspector is less than pleased. He really has a soft spot for protecting our detective.

I shake my head. 'Just a way to get Sherlock interested in this case. I forget where I found that mask, a long time ago. But it probably isn't important. Who the owner was, I mean. Hence, an anonymous letter.'

'Why just not tell the case to Sherlock, ask him to take it?'

I frown. 'He really didn't want to take cases, remember? They were all _dull_, and London was _dull_, and we were all _duller_ _than_ _dull_. And look at him now? Bright eyed and bushy tailed. I will apologise for the deception one day, Greg. Just not anytime soon. First I'll let him do what he does best; be Sherlock Holmes.'

Greg Lestrade is still looking at me funny. I guess he didn't quite think I had it in me.

That's where he got it wrong. To help my best mate keep his sanity I will source cases no matter what, and I'm the writer of the duo, right? It really isn't that much of a stretch of the imagination that I could create an imaginary case.

'He will be mad at you, John', the inspector concludes, grimly.

'I hope not. It's a risk I must take, that he will eventually find out. I mean, he is who he is, there's no other outcome', I assume, looking over to the excited detective inspecting the yellowed mask, in a sharp silhouette at the first floor windows.

Greg sighs, rubbing the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable, I notice out of the corner of my eye.

I sincerely hope he doesn't tell-tale on me and ruin Sherlock's diversion too soon. This is what the housebound detective needs right now, this is doing him a world of good.

'So how did you make the mask appear inside Baker Street when no one came to the door? You were with Sherlock at all times. He said so.'

'Oh, _that_. Mrs Hudson is in on it. I knew Sherlock would only rig the outer steps so I asked her to deliver the goods. Which she did easily, from the inside.'

Greg Lestrade chuckles.

'You're disturbingly good at deceiving Sherlock and having others help you with it, John', he points out, squinting at me. I shrug. 'Keep him from calling me again on this case of yours, will you?' Greg demands as he leaves.

He still looks peeved, though.

I look back onto the familiar front door of 221 Baker Street.

No matter what Greg thinks, home is complete now it bubbles with a mysterious case.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	72. Chapter 72

_A/N: Sorry, small insert type of chapter. I'll have it finished on the next one, I hope. It's getting rather lengthy of its own accord. -csf_

* * *

_**Three.**_

I felt bad soon after. Particularly when Sherlock insisted on staying up all night having tests on our front door. I had to stay up too, intent on keeping him from inflicting chemical damage on the dark wood, or those near microscopic drilled holes that went a way into proving I know not what. It really made me feel rotten as I saw every hypothesis and test he selected to perform come up flat. Couldn't be otherwise. Sherlock was searching desperately for a trick from outside, an evil entity taunting him, a Jim Moriarty's shadow carrying some of the original's enticement, when I knew for a fact that Baker Street was as impregnable and safe as it had always been. I was reaching my own wits end, unable to hold on to the act much longer, to rationalise a trick gone horribly wrong for lack of foresight, when suddenly as it had all started, it ended.

Sherlock abandoned pursuit. Grabbed that mask out of the old shoebox and declared it his greatest mystery after all.

_That was a close call._

Guilt and embarrassment still poisoning my veins. How could I have been so callous not to ponder how Sherlock would feel upon discovering he's been duped? By me, too. I'm no Moriarty. The ignominy becomes sharper, tangier, leaving a bad taste behind.

It was easier to imagine that I could explain myself when I anticipated a milder response from the detective. He would find it odd, then funny, then pat me in the back and promise darkly some sort of revenge that involved swapping my shampoo for industrial dye that would not actually come to pass.

The same reason I started in this mess – to save Sherlock from himself – is the reason this is now all going horribly wrong. Sherlock's obsession with his work.

The moment the great detective abandoned pursuit of the illusive intruder, I sighed in relief, only to second guess myself. Had Sherlock found me out? Did Mrs Hudson slip when talking with the detective? I immediately dismissed the latter. For an old lady who had managed to deceive the CIA with practised ease and hide a certain reputable camera phone in the folds of her day dress, well... if there's ever a secret to keep from her tenants she's absolutely capable of making sure we never even suspect. Luckily we have this senior Mata Hari on our side. She has missed a great career with the other Holmes brother, if they only got along better.

'John, stop daydreaming and fetch me my thin point tweezers.'

I look up, startled. I'm a bit sleepy, a bit groggy, but in no hurry to hit the bed. Sherlock is just now starting his analysis on the case I fed him in secret. It's only five in the morning anyway.

'Tweezers', I mutter to myself, getting up from the kitchen chair and stretching my limbs awkwardly. 'Sherlock, what did you just ask me for?'

He glances at me. Somehow he decides to take pity on me. 'Tweezers, John.' It comes across _concerned_, but that can't be right; Sherlock has got all his attention on the mysterious object.

Why would a mask generate concern?

Right, that's it. I'm a bit tired, that's all.

I open the cutlery drawer and get those damned tweezers out. They stay with the forks, all having prong like endings. Spatulas with the spoons, and scalpels with the knives. It keeps them tidy. Also handy when there's no clean cutlery left.

'What are you got there then?'

'Wooden fibbers, John. Determining the type of wood. Also dissolving the paint in different concentrations of acid to ascertain the paint solvents used. And, of course, I'm determining the accurate measurements between the eye slits and mouth to infer probable cultural inheritance of the maker, assuming, of course, he modelled those features after himself and not a client.'

'Oh, that's clever. I wouldn't have thought of all that.'

'That's alright, you'll never be a detective, John. We are all built favourably different.'

There is a flash of clever humour in his eyes, but I'm too tired to make sense of it.

_**.**_

John has fallen asleep, slumped on a kitchen chair, close by. I have noted before that at times when he's haunted by the traumatic events of his past he sleeps better in close proximity to me. How he expects me to infiltrate his memories and shield the bad ones I'm not sure. Perhaps he does that on his own when I'm around. Or it's the quiet sounds of my activity that ground him, safe at home.

John is not shy to fall sleep, even in a room full of people. Must be the army training, with the all hours medic shifts, and the constant uprooting.

His light coloured hair, full of dusty blond and silver streaks, reflects the electric glow of the overhead fluorescent tube. It's not a kind light, as it harnesses the blue tinges under his eyes, resting just under the pale skin. While asleep, John's face is a marvellous work of transformative art. It loses the layers of cognisant social etiquette, the harsh lines of military training, and the constraints of age and background. He looks young, too young, to have had the life I know he's lived. The war, the many losses, the difficulties in his path, all but forgotten, erased, until morning, or a stiff neck, awaken him again.

Because he's asleep under the cold scrutiny of the white light, I can pick up on the speckled skin. Minute freckles that you cannot really observe during the day, like clear night skies full of stars away from the urban light pollution. And those light tan lashes that are so often eclipsed by the big honest eyes. They are near translucent in this light. His breathing is deep and paced, no hint of the nightmares that have kept him company the last few nights. They may yet come, as it's an exhaustion slumber he dwells under at this time, too exhausted for any dreams.

He should be in his bed. It's not only nightmares that keep him close. He wants to _help_. I wouldn't have turned him away if I had tried. His loyalty almost a proof of identity.

Yet his reactions are a bit _off_ in this case. Or I'm off my game myself – but that is highly unlikely. Statistically speaking, of course.

John Watson is a oxymoron wrapped in a paradox of life. The soldier and the healer, the leader and the team player, the short stature man that stands straight and can look taller than anyone else in the room. Almost anyone. I still stand taller, but I suffer little illusion. That is because he chooses to defer to me, to allow me to fill the room, as he takes a preferred back seat.

A modest man. A quality that marks the way he lives his life and answers to challenges.

He's added to his list of enticing mysteries of personal choice _being the creator of a fake case_. Extraordinary. The nerve, the cool headedness, the artifice without real malice, are all incredible draws. _Should every detective have a faithful sidekick to dig up new cases by any means necessary and there may be more of us in the job._

I could really have been upset the moment the farce became crystal clear to me, kneeling at our home's front steps. _When you rule out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._ No intruder had set foot inside Baker Street. An inside job, then. John had remained close at all times, incapable of pulling the deception without being seen. Mrs Hudson then, clearly. An accomplice. Both the lack of opportunity and wrong style tell me this isn't her doing. Yet Mrs Hudson's loyalty is no match to promises of wealth, fame or fortune. Some other motive would have lured her down this path. Who, then, could ask her such a simple favour, and yet, keep in her grace? Who but the harmless looking, easy smiles doctor Watson?

John. _Our John._

The identity of the mystery client solved in the most improbable way, now remained a more pertinent question; _why?_

Could I still trust John? Was he the naïve vehicle for some helpless dame, or gent, asking him to keep their identity covert, to take up penship of a latter and deliver the goods? John will always fall for a helpless client in distress, it's almost part of his romantic nature, but, somehow, the way he tiptoed around the letter and the case did not reveal the fervour of a white knight.

He's been quiet, instead of passionately advocating for the client at any opportunity.

That would imply this is John's own case. _Preposterous_, really, that he wouldn't just come right out and ask me to investigate it for him. I could hardly proclaim me too busy to take it. Well, _of course I'd act as if I were_, but I mean _afterwards, after considerable debate, _I'd take the case.

I've always found it hard to refuse John.

My doctor has divorced himself from the mask, the mystery. That seems to imply a casual finding, not much background information to provide.

_Or, paradoxically, too much._

I look on at John, earlier tonight, through the lens of memory. Distractedly making tea, as is his custom when uncomfortable. _Guilt_, then. It doesn't sit well with him the deceit he's played on me.

Guilt is one of 21 possible triggers for John's tea making, ordinarily.

Tea is an extraordinarily complicated process.

I wonder where John got this mask, this odd object so divorced from his usual acquisitions. I'm the clutter collector, the trophy finder, the hoarder of assorted goods. John is the minimalist soldier, always on the go, keeping light.

_Why get this?_

Unless it is an old acquisition. Keeping it because getting rid of it disrespected the memory of an ancestor. Unless that old relative is actually a real reference, that John transposed to his invented narrative.

_This is John's own past. _The flicker of a memory he brought forward to tame my restlessness now I don't have cases.

He told me all he could, about an old trunk with a false bottom in an attic, through the guise of an anonymous client. I believe his story to be as factual as he could keep it without denouncing his identity.

Oh, the self-deprecating detail of getting his own name wrong. Devilish, deliciously tortuous, and oddly enough a frequent mistake. John knows our clients, knows the character he was playing.

Still he could have avoided the artifice. _Why didn't he come to me?_ John is too considerate to impose on me a dead and buried mystery. He redefined it through the impartial façade of an anonymous client to whom I owe nothing.

One I can abandon heartlessly at any point, for I know not the client, he thinks.

_This is John's own case, I know now._

_I will investigate it, as per his request._

And John is still a source of constant surprise to me. When I think I've got him figured out, he surprises me with his generosity.

I must remember, though, that he feels guilty over the deception. He expects me to get back at him, after discovery of the facts. I could easily lead him to believe he won this round, and I never found out, but the guilt would only deepen in the folds of his actions regarding me. Lots of apologetic cups of tea. Whilst always fine standards tea, it's not one of the 21 reasons John Watson makes tea that I like to stimulate. No, the rouse must be laid bare. The lie, the mystery and the solution.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	73. Chapter 73

_A/N: Still in Sher-lock-down universe._

_In real life a lot of restrictions in the UK are being lifted in a somewhat confusing manner, so I'd be pressed to explain them. As I get a grasp of the moment I will try to transport it here. See our heroes off these difficult times._

_I see that the Spanish Flu, a century ago, did not fare well in books and (silent era) films. Maybe I shouldn't have weaved reality in these tiny stories. While most people tried to live of better times past or future, I'm just too used to trying to adjust when my world implodes. Trying to make sense of the falling debris. Working it into the every day as a new type of rain. And you know what they say about rain in England._

_Like everyone else I hope we're seeing it die down here, and that it does not do much damage in countries where it still spreads._

_And that we can all find a peaceful coexistence in the times that lie ahead, more equal and free. Where individuals can be judged by their merits and contributions and break free from old, hurtful patterns of thought, and are allowed the same opportunities to shine bright their light. __So that the post covid-19 days can be better than those we left behind. Wiser. Deeper. And we can say we learnt a lesson or two._

_It's a stupidly long A/N. -csf_

* * *

_**Four.**_

Black, bitter coffee scent permeates my foggy brain, awaking me. I blink my eyes open, shudder myself to a proper sitting up position, look around furtively to figure out where I am. 221B's kitchen. That's alright then. _Safe ground_. How on earth did I—

Oh, right,_ Sherlock._

That explains it then.

What's the case this time?

_Oh._

'Blushing is an unprecedented reaction to my coffee, John. I shall file it away under "John's inexplicable inner dialogue reactions", shall I?'

'Err...'

He's so cocky, he's truly impossible.

'John, when you're ready, in your own time, I got you coffee. Think of it as a perk, as we're about to solve a mysterious old case that requires some brain power to follow. I am hoping the caffeine will stimulate the synapses and fire up that dreadfully underutilised neurons of yours.'

I squint. He's too fired up for whatever hours-in-the-morning it is.

I bet he never even went to bed.

Over _this_ case?

Right. As if I didn't feel guilty already for deceiving Sherlock into taking my case, disguised as an anonymous case. I made it the more interesting for the absence of an identifiable client, which is usually one of the slightest concerns of my detective friend. By removing one unimportant link in the chain, I made it the focal point in the crazy investigator's mind. Quite the paradox. Unforeseen and unpredictable.

Is there any hope that Sherlock won't ever find out I fed him this mystery?

'John, I took the tiniest shaving from the mask. Please come look at the particular cellulosic structure of the wood sampling.'

That redirects me easily. Sherlock knows I enjoy following each step of his brilliant case solving, not just the magician's reveal of whodunit. He won't show me every step – not to try keeping his methods secret, he's only too happy sharing his success – because he likes to keep this professional façade of a sweat free, near effortless process. That is hardly ever the case, as in fact his incredible streak of solved cases is often the product of hard work and sleepless nights.

'You are trying to determine the type of wood and its age', I gather.

'To ascertain provenance of the mask, yes. So far it has proved to be very elucidative.'

'Really? Which far corner of the world has it come from?'

'With a small margin of error... Scottish pine trees.'

'Scotland?' I repeat, in disbelief. 'That's hardly exotic.' I hold up the tribal looking object from the improvised stand; the fireplace skull. 'It's a fake then?'

Sherlock's clear eyes are hung up on my every move. It's a known quirk of his and I stopped minding a long time ago. It does not phase me any more. If anything, it gives me the warm feeling that I'm no longer alone.

'The client's great-grandfather used local wood, and sharp carving tools, the chisel having a fault along the edge, scratching the wood as it went. The yellow paint is somewhat degraded from a more acid green tone, to be fair I'm still gathering information on the paint as we speak. I'm going through a few standard chemical analysis reactions. The accessories, such as the highly damaged feathers are grouse feathers. The signs are there for a homemade fashion accessory, John. Built to impress and entertain children or small crowds at local festive halls... Are you disappointed?'

_Yes_. I suppose you could say that. There were incomplete papers among the trunk, accounts of explorers and adventures in far away lands, when I first found the mask. Those are long lost. Harry kept only the mask. Shipped it over upon my request, after long insistence. But the papers she ruthlessly got rid off. I couldn't complain. I had not kept a thing from our childhood home, I had nowhere to keep old mementos. Anyway. Lies. Children's tales. Made grandiose by my childhood imagination.

It's almost like a loss. My great-grandfather, the explorer, was a reference that made my first deployment to the Middle East a bit easier. I was following his footsteps, I could do it because he were Watsons. I found comfort in his conjured image. He probably never even left town. Other than in his stories, that I read as a kid sneaking up to the attic on rainy days.

'Not disappointed at all, Sherlock. Except, hmm, I guess we won't be able to let the client know. With him being anonymous and all.'

Sherlock's attention is steadfast.

'Doctor _Wilson_ can use his blog.'

'Oh, yeah, right. Right... So what are you up to now?'

He finally breaks eye contact.

'Some sleep. I can afford to leave the last few analysis until later.'

'Yes. Of course. No rush.'

'And, John?'

'Yes?'

'Do tell our anonymous client his great-grandfather could have been a vaudeville actor or a serial train robber. In fact he could have been a true explorer, returned from abroad presenting his findings to a museum, and recreating masks for his children to play with. Do tell our client I will continue to investigate presently, will you?'

With a soft smile present the worn out detective to his bedroom.

_**.**_

I smile to myself as I softly close the door to Sherlock's bedroom. He's softly asleep now. He really needed to rest.

I guess it wasn't much of a case, after all, but like a worn out child, Sherlock sleeps the content, blissful sleep of the innocent. He has really sunk his teeth into this one.

But he missed the main point.

That throughout this case _I was a fraud._ A case about a lost mask. An antique artifice that turned out to be a fake in itself. A reproduction or an artistic reinterpretation. A child's toy or a grown man's theatrical costume piece. We may never know. Too much time has elapsed. History has been lost.

I hold the mask up in my hands as I slowly pace the way to my armchair. I'm tired myself, but restless. Something didn't quite sit right in this case, I guess. After the initial euphoria of dubbing Sherlock Holmes, I felt bad for abusing his beautiful trust.

My eyes flicker to the mirror above the mantel. Then down towards the yellow mask.

In the cultural appropriation of a liar and deceiver, I put it on, and check my reflex in the mirror.

I chuckle softly at the grotesque, comical image reflected.

Well, it's stuffy, making it harder to breathe, and sweaty. I don't think the actor would have been too pleased to keep this on long.

I wobble slightly, for no reason, and quickly take a dive on my armchair. I take that wretched mask off and lay it down on the side table. I have to scrub my eyes to clear my sight. I must be more tired than I thought. Age will have something to do with that.

I'll write that blog entry later. _The mysterious client already knows._

I let my head fall back on the lumpy upholstery and close my eyes, allowing myself to drift off to sleep.

_**.**_

'John, can you hear me?'

I snap my eyes open. What I see deeply troubles me. I'm haphazardly sat on the loo with the lid down, and Sherlock has been splattering cold water on my face. As I blink he hits me straight on with a wet flannel and proceeds to scrub my face.

I rebel at once, coughing and turning away.

'What the—?'

'John! I have unwittingly poisoned you!' he declares, frenetic.

I groan reflexively. 'Not again!'

He blinks. 'Not entirely my fault this time', he defends himself, miffed. Upset.

I look around, still blurry. 'What happened?'

'Follow me to my lab, John.'

I get up groggily. I find that I can stand.

'You mean, the kitchen?'

'Just because you cook there, does it make it a kitchen?'

'It's got a stove, Sherlock.'

'Bunsen burners of an odd shape.'

'And the fridge?'

'Cold storage, obviously.'

'Pots and pans?'

'Beakers and conical flasks too', Sherlock counters. 'John, how often do you cook, as opposed to my scientific experiments?'

I sigh, just as we reach Sherlock's home laboratory.

The man himself pulls me out of my revolving cloudy thoughts as he casually extends me goggles, gloves and mask.

'Sherlock, I told you, we don't really need all this to go out. Some virus precautions are fine, but—'

He nearly rolls his eyes.

I try to reach out for the yellow mask.

He hisses at once: 'Just drop it, John. Drop it at once.'

I instinctively obey, but still ask - 'Why?'

'John, you have already handled that yellow mask more than acceptable, considering the trace evidence I have found on the inner surface of copper arsenite dye.'

Wait. Arsenic? _No_. Really?

Sherlock hands me print outs of old newspaper clippings. Really _old_. Then he swiftly turns around and starts pacing up and down the kitchen.

I look down. _"The Gruesome Death Of Piccadilly Twins", "Toddler Twins Mourned By Nation", "Piccadilly Twins' Poisoned To Death In Tragic Accident"._

'No... I'm not a toddler, though.'

'Age will have saved your life in this instance, John. And I also concede you have not handled the mask enough on a lethal basis. But the clues were all there. Heavy metal poisoning. From the excessive night sweats to the lethargic state I found you in just now—'

I'm a doctor. Those were a collection of very slight symptoms, for Sherlock to have pieced all this together, it is amazing.

Luckily for me, the symptoms will abate in time, once removed the cause.

'The paint?' I try to understand.

'John, I had not finished my analysis. If I had a proper lab instead of a kitchen!' he angrily gestures at the space and refocuses on me with sheer intensity. 'John Watson, you have not only provided me with a case, you nearly provided me with a corpse and a murder weapon.'

I blink.

'I'm a grown man, it would take a few decades of exposure, stop being so dramatic!' I protest, holding my aching head. 'No. Wait. _You_ _know _I was the client. _You_ _found_ _out_.'

He huffs.

'Of course. I was bound to. I'm Sherlock Holmes.'

Well, if Lestrade discovered it, I guess it was inevitable.

'You are awfully calm about it', I comment.

'It seems that the mask has already caused you adverse reactions, thus diminishing my urge for atonement from your part.'

I chuckle at his high horse response. So does he.

'Yeah. I did a number here', I admit. 'Silly idea to try the mask on... Thanks for your help back there. Are you sure you're okay with... this?'

He smirks comfortably.

'John, I believe the colloquial term is that you have _catfished_ me.'

'What? Wait, no! Maybe, but I didn't mean to— I catfished you? How the hell was I supposed to know that you'd take this so seriously?'

He eyes me flatly. I blink. _Yeah, alright._

Suddenly I gulp dry.

'Wait, if you knew...'

'You are _fascinating_, John', he answers my unspoken question. 'Just fascinating.'

I try to find unspoken answers in his green eyes. They are fierce like gemstones, and they guard their secrets in their cold water veins. I still don't get it, after all these years.

'So I'm – like – _forgiven_?'

He nods silently, but out loud says: 'Depends... How soon can you get me a new case? John, it's been ages since I had a case!'

And just like that he turns around and gesticulates all the way to the living room – his office, I presume – making too much fuss to distract me from all that has happened.

I smile on, and decide to take pity on him. I'll search the papers for a new case. One with an identifiable client this time. A nice murder is just what my friend needs...

_**.**_


	74. Chapter 74

_A/N: I'm not entirely sure it makes sense, though, but this is what it came out like. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

I bang shut the bathroom door behind me. In the kitchen, my flatmate lifts a curious forehead from the crouching stance over his beloved microscope. He flexes his neck like a flexible cat, eyeing me suspiciously. Waiting for my next move.

'Sherlock, there's an octopus in our bathtub. A live octopus.' If I sound incredulous, can you blame me?

He focuses back on the microscope eye pieces, nonplussed.

'Hush now, John. It's just visiting.'

'It gave me the evil eye too.'

'I'll have a word with the _guest_. Will you drop it now? Tea does not make itself in a delectable self-conjuring act, you know?'

I blink repeatedly.

'Fine, but stop redirecting me, I'm onto you and your eight armed friend', I hiss.

Sherlock smirks. 'Is this still about Anderson assisting me at the last crime scene?'

I flash him mental daggers. _Yeah, I got jealous. I've had a good night sleep since, so I'm fine now._

_I'm not usually that insecure. I think. Am I? Nah._

I shake my head minutely as I head for the kettle. Tea can put any early morning start back on track.

Sherlock is once again observing a mysterious sample. It's a sickly black-green.

I hope that bathroom octopus is not ill.

'I will collect you from your hospital shift later on, John.'

'Hmm?'

'And I'll reunite you with your gun, if you care to join me in a little adventure', he almost purrs. Then breaks in honest constriction. 'If you are not too tired after your shift.'

Good point.

Lockdown has been partially eased, but it's still important to keep a nice 2 metres social distance from other people. Sherlock and I have talked it over and figured my gun was a good old fashioned way of imposing some distance in our confrontations with criminals. I still don't want to shoot, particularly an unarmed person, but that is something the criminal freezing and getting their hands up in the air won't necessarily have to know.

'Buy me a cup of coffee and I'll be right as rain, Sherlock... Does this have anything to do with the octopus in the bathtub?'

My friend looks mildly surprised. 'No, of course not, why would it?'

I grin. 'No reason, just checking... Mrs Hudson won't let me drive her car, after the stories on my driving you've been spreading, and you said you would give me a ride to work...' I check.

Sherlock nods, very serious.

'For optimal traffic congestion avoidance, we will leave in exactly six minutes, thirty seconds, John.'

I blow on the surface of my tea mug, trying to cool it faster. It'd figure my friend had a mind map route already planned out. So far he's outdone the performance of several ordinary internet applications. Although he once drove straight through a construction site, and twice through business parking lots.

Who said having a genius for a flatmate did not come with practical use?

'And your case?'

'I will tell you all about it upon your collection from the hospital, John. I don't want to be the cause of a distracted behaviour during your doctoring.'

He really thinks himself that high and mighty, huh?

He's right on this account. It's escapism at its best, and something to look forward all gruelling day long.

_**.**_

Sherlock is impatiently waiting inside Mrs Hudson's posh car, as if he had been born to ride it and now he was being grievously inconvenienced by my delay. I smirk at the familiarity of the scene. It's Baker Street every day of the week, through and through.

I shrug off some weighted exhaustion from my shoulders, knowing only Sherlock can cast away the shadows of a hard day so quickly.

Just to mess with my mate, I head to the back door, and get inside declaring: 'Take me on an adventure, cabbie!'

He's startled so bad he actually does a double take on me. I worry at once.

'Who did you think it was?' I protest, stretching to climb to the vacant seat at the front.

He shrugs. 'Jim Moriarty's ghost?'

Now I know he's trying to aggravate me, _and_ _succeeding_. He smirks at my reaction.

'For the record, John, only you can surprise me in such manner. You dull my senses, you have become background noise. It's most inconvenient.'

I don't think that is a nice thing to say. At the same time, I'm too confused to claim it's a bad thing to say.

The moment I buckle up, Sherlock steps on the gas.

_And he claims he can drive better than I can._

I reach out to the book he negligently put aside. I gave him this copy long ago. _The_ _Solar_ _System_. It hardly looks thumbed.

'New hobby, mate?'

'Thought it might come handy, help pass the time. We are doing on a stake out, John.'

Oh. That's a bit boring. Did I hurry through thirty seven patients for a stake out?

_**.**_

'And the octopus case?' I remember, shifting restlessly at the damp soil behind a garden bench, at the end of a newly built property.

Sherlock is standing so close I can tell apart the scent of his high end shampoo from the odorous scents of the honeysuckle trails on the fence behind us. Sherlock is wood and spice, complementing the wet earth dampening the cuffs of my trousers.

It's nice to be out and about.

'The killer used octopus ink to leave a message at the crime scene, taunting the police. Although he was a vicious and sadistic murderer, he did not harm any sea creature in the aquarium.'

'And the octopus in our bathtub?'

'Witness protection, John. I trust you don't mind.'

Baker Street is a safe haven to anyone in distress, we're a last recourse to anyone whose other hopes have failed them.

'However', Sherlock adds timely, 'last time I checked, the octopus was no longer there.'

'Where did it go?'

He shrugs. 'How should I know?'

Great. Now I'll have to look in the sink before doing the dishes, in the kettle before I make tea, and on that rain gutter at the back that is always clogged anyway.

'Sherlock, you mean to say you lost—'

My friend stops our quiet banter with a brisk hand on my forearm. He's spotted danger. About time, too.

I look on up, squinting at the peaceful suburban house. I see no signs of activity.

Sherlock is still quite intent, gazing at the house with such intensity that I gather he's trying to use some x-ray vision superpower he doesn't own. A bird flaps its wings, taking off from the edge of the roof, my flatmate lifts a curious set of wild dark curls. The atmosphere grows tense.

Barbers are still closed for business, and Sherlock's hair is turning into a very appropriate wild mane, in keeping with the personality. I quite like the longer locks, on Sherlock that is. I know he's not too keen on the grey hairs strewn among the dark inky curls, but that doesn't bother me either. It makes his look uniquely distinct, as it should be, for Sherlock Holmes is one unparalleled brilliant person.

_You just can't ever let him suspect that, or he'll collapse under the weight of his own ego._

'John, a favour?'

'Sure!'

'Will you stop eyeing me during this stake out and watch the suspect's house instead?'

_Oh._

'You're watching it already', I diverge.

'And you're the military man, taught surveillance tactics.'

'Nah, I was there because in a war you never run out of patients. Job guaranteed.'

Sherlock smirks, knowing better than to take me seriously.

I glance at the high windows again, the shadowy corners of the sloped roof. Good timing too, for I think I see something there, something wrong. A shadow, a movement?

I lay a hand on Sherlock's arm, insisting he keeps low, and cock up my gun in my right hand, my shooting hand.

I definitely feel awake now, adrenaline hitting my veins, travelling everywhere.

'You sure this guy is the triple killer, mate?' I whisper. He nods. I raise my anger level another notch. I'll fire if I have to.

'What is he doing up there?'

'Setting up a trap for his next kill.'

'_Sherlock!'_

'I see them, John.' The detective's voice is clipped, angry.

'He's got someone with him!'

I glance Sherlock's way for an instant alone. A flaw to the genius' plan. He's squinting hard, trying to make out the scene at the window. The killer seems to be pulled in by our curiosity, or just trails to the window in unsteady steps as he fights a new victim. _Damn! _I get up in one fluid motion, gun held securely in an outstretched arm, and pull the trigger.

The killer drops the knife, releases his choke hold on the blond lady, staggers under the blossoming red stain in his sweater.

I lower my gun, breathing hard. Sherlock storms past me, rushing to the house, running wildly towards danger. Before I can run after him, _save his sorry behind_, I miss the killer's movements up there, I'm a second too late to see him raise a gun – what? he was a strangler with a knife, now a gun? – and point it towards me. I try to duck, but I know, I sense, it's too late.

I hit the soft grass as the noise of a firearm discharge thundering halts. I groan as the first wave of pain slams me hard.

I vaguely watch Sherlock double back, livid. He snatches the gun I've dropped, that fits daintily in his large hand. He aims it to the high window and fires revengeful shots at the escaping criminal.

I can't be bothered to tell Sherlock that's my gun. He can gave his fun with it.

Which he does, emptying the chamber uselessly. Brick and mortar flick off the façade and the window smashes. Finally Sherlock loops the gun on his belt on his lower back; _are you nuts? It's burning hot from the shots you fired!_

Sherlock flinches slightly, but oblivious to his own actions, he's transfixed on his partner sprawled on the ground_. Man down._

'John!'

'Just a scratch. I can walk.' I strive to push him away and analyse my bleeding arm. My left arm. It stings badly, and I feel nauseous, but I think it's mostly sensory memory of far worse gunshot wounds. My memory wants to mash past events with today's.

I blink hard to focus. Some skin tissue damage, mostly a predictable long scar, mostly harmless. Some disinfecting and stitches and I'll be alright.

Adrenaline overflow is keeping the pain levels down.

Damn it. The killer got away.

Sherlock did not pursue; he's busying himself holding me up, cursing me, spluttering my life stats at me; in sum, having a meltdown.

Can't blame him, I'd have one too if I were in his shoes.

It's even a bit endearing.

'Cut it out', I choke, my own head a bit dizzy. 'I'm fine, Sherlock. The blonde woman, she needs help, you're going to have to call Lestrade, get him to fix this mess.'

'Why should I care?' he derides. He looks as if his world is crumbling apart.

I take my hand against his cheek, and the touch seems to appease the millions of whirlwind thoughts (and recriminations) swirling in there. His shiny blue eyes focus on my own eyes, as if searching for recognition.

'Thanks for the backup, you know, with my gun', I choke out. I'm starting to shake in earnest. Bloody shock.

'Ambulance?' he asks me.

I'm still the doctor. _What is my diagnosis?_

I shake my head. Gunshot wounds are trouble, they need to be reported to the police and investigated. Involving Lestrade would be paramount to have the officer in charge look the other way.

'I'm alright. Besides the blonde woman may be hurt. We need to check she's alright.'

Sherlock lends me his scarf. I'm touched. For one it's much too warm to wear a scarf. This is a sign of my friend's neediness to follow a routine, keep his iconic look, hide in superiority – you never see him breaking a sweat. Until now. He looks frazzled and lost, as he helps loop the expensive fabric around my bicep. I wind it tight, stemming the blood flow.

I get up in trembling legs, a rush of blood to the head quickly dissipating. I feel better now, and try to indicate that to Sherlock by means of pushing him away.

'I'll get the car', he promises darkly, not without a quick assessment look around us to see where I can hit my head if I keel over. Soft grass, mostly; I thought of the same thing.

I see the detective still bending down and picking up something off the damp grass. Something embedded. From the location I gather it must be the bullet. That's very thorough, can we do the same for my bullets scattered all over the side of the house? Last thing I need is an invoice for the damage my gun has caused.

Sherlock is clearly still fighting his instinct to stick by my side as he jumps the high fence with flexibility due for a circus acrobat. I shake my head – I'll use the front gate, thank you – before I take off on my own, towards the house.

The blonde woman, I need to check on her. Sherlock is freaking out over my wound, but I have no such excuse. I'm a doctor, she's a patient, and even though I feel weak and need to cup my hand around my wound to keep from leaving a blood droplets trail behind me, I must check up on her.

Scarlet trickle blossoms between my fingers as I open the front door.

'Hello?'

No answer. Great. I must go in. Sherlock will kill me, when he finally catches up.

He's a genius and he knows me better than I know myself. _It won't take long._

'Are you okay?' I shout to the open stairwell.

I think I can gear a small groan from above. I relentlessly climb those steps, senses engaged, alert. Adrenaline drowning everything but that tingling excitement of danger around me. 'Hello?'

As I reach the top steps she falls on me, as if she had been hiding from view but decided to trust me suddenly. I almost fall backwards on those steps but manage to grab hold of her and myself in the last second. My palm leaves a red imprint on her sweater.

She blurts out, tears of relief streaming down her eyes: 'You saved me!'

Alright, she will be fine once the shock wears off her system too.

'John?' It's Sherlock. I find him at the bottom of the stairs. He's rolling his eyes at me, impatient. He doesn't fool me. He's not happy with me.

'Sherlock, this is not what it seems.'

'Just drop it, John. Just drop it.'

_**.**_

I'm sat on the bathtub edge, my open first aid kit pieces scattered about on the floor. Sherlock hands me a clean piece of gauze with a dark energy in his eyes, an a contained violence that is electrifying the air.

'It's only a flesh wound, Sherlock', I warn him.

'I can see that', he states flatly.

He's he promising to drop this quietly?

I press the gauze to the battered skin and sigh. _Close call._

Sherlock's eyes narrow, just before he turns around to help me pack up the unused items. I watch his diligence, feeling grateful.

'No need to talk about it any more, all done', I add, trying to get my shirt sleeve back up my arm.

'Almost all done', he mutters, a storm brewing in his words.

'What did I miss?' I ask lightly.

He tosses a little specimen jar my way, with a piece of amalgamated metal inside. I recognise what this is at once. It's still oblong, but now dull and tarnished. The bullet that nicked me.

_It had my name on it, I suppose._

'It's remarkably preserved', I comment, coolly. It dug into the garden's soft turf.

Sherlock's eyes narrow dangerously further. _Uh-oh._

This is the meltdown we barely managed to avoid before. Jumping to the forefront.

_Right._

'I knew the risk, Sherlock. It didn't keep me away', I remind him, crossing my arms – well, hiding that flinch it cost me – in kamikaze captain Watson style, I'm facing this argument head on.

'Indeed.'

'I've known about the stake outs, the chases, the science experiments, _the_ _lot_, from the start. None of it ever pushed me away. Tomorrow I'm back to work as normal, and so are you.'

'So you say.'

I squint.

'And we'll get the strangler-shooter that got away.'

Sherlock waves off dismissively. 'Lestrade has caught up with him. Someone had beaten him up in an alley after he left the scene.'

My senses go on high alert. _No... really?_

'How? You've been at my side since I got shot. You just went for some more gauze in the living room stash... and you took your while...'

He flashes a smirk.

'Great', I say sarcastically. 'I held the sobbing victim, you beat the killer. We both broke all rules about keeping safe distances from those you don't live with.'

He looks indecently smug about it.

'I could not stop myself from ensuring you were never to be harmed by that person again. As much as you couldn't leave a potential patient untreated. Now what do we do?' he asks me plainly, under the cover of fake constriction.

I sigh. 'Maybe we can't take cases yet. My reflexes are slow. I got shot. And you took a reading book to a stake out.'

'Oh, it was a boring book...'

'You never read a page of it!'

'I read the credits and copyright page.'

'No wonder it was boring!'

'You can write better than that, John. Perhaps you should teach me about the solar system.'

'You said the same thing about the new microwave's instructions, and look what you've done with it!'

Sherlock smirks. He looks happier, content. Comforted by our crazy banter. This is what he needed.

I sigh. This is what I needed to.

'So we weren't all that good with adjusting our cases to social distancing measures. What do we do now?'

'We try again, John. Do better. Live our lives once more.'

I nod. Sure, it's weird though. The virus is still about, and we regroup to live our lives. _Things go back, but they are far from the same._

Sherlock and I are out of practice. We'll have to keep an extra eye out for each other. But it's exciting. It's a new start, maybe with a hint of peril, and I find I like that.

We can make a difference in this world, and we wouldn't want to step back now.

Much in the least because a bullet grazed me. Most likely it won't have been the last.

'How about some tea, Sherlock?' I suggest, with a soft smile.

He smiles too, slowly, deliberately, and I take what I can get. I'll see those shadows lift from his haggard face yet.

'I'll get the kettle going', he offers, getting up, taking the first aid bag with him.

I sigh, tiredly, blankly massaging my sore arm.

I'm going to be okay.

Then I look up, and my jaw almost drops.

How did that runaway octopus get in the corner of the ceiling, clinging on arms arched wide like an ominous spider?

I get up with a cold shiver and walk out of the bathroom on tiptoe, banging the door shut after me.

_'Sherloooooock!'_

_**.**_


	75. Chapter 75

_A/N: Not much of a plot. Need to come up with better next time. Sorry. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

Mostly housebound during the worst of the virus outbreak, Sherlock was in need of distraction – almost_ constant distraction_ – so his ebullient brain cells wouldn't crumble to dust.

It's not just painful to watch his bouts of depressed inertia, that thug at my heart strings. According to the great genius himself, without _brain food,_ my friend's mind starts to consume itself in a way. Sherlock's brain will have a unique tendency to migraines if he hasn't been keeping it oiled and running like a race car engine.

In a desperate attempt at finding Sherlock something in which his knowledge is not yet above mankind's average, I settled upon the age old "the Earth revolves around the Sun" debacle. I ordered Sherlock a telescope so he could study the Solar System, the entirety of which is a giant black hole mystery to him. That should keep him busy for a while, and I thought little more of that.

The gift arrived weeks layer and was promptly dismissed as insensitive and hurtful.

'_Did you really not like it?'_

'_Oh, just drop it, John! My genius is clearly misunderstood by lesser minds!'_

_I flipped him off, making sure he could spot it in the fireplace mirror. He smirked, amused; the prat._

The astronomy gift stayed in Mrs Hudson's hallway for days. That is, until one morning I came downstairs for breakfast and found the boxes and wrapping strewn all over the landing. I carefully trailed upon to the living room and, sure enough, there was Sherlock, bending slightly to peer over the telescope.

'No, Sherlock, you're supposed to watch the stars at night, not the neighbours during the day!'

'If it were a nocturnal use piece it'd have come with a light', he dismisses.

'What?'

Sherlock grins wickedly at me. _Oh, he's just messing with me. Not _all that_ oblivious. However, this spying lark seems to run in the family._

His brother Mycroft is just the same. Two genius that set themselves apart from the common human, but who secretly desire to understand and mingle with society, and as such as prone to the voyeuristic analysis of mankind from their ivory towers.

_What have I just done?_

I sigh and start tidying up the mangled cardboard boxes.

'Leave the bubble wrap, John', he demands, without even taking his gaze from the eye piece.

I frown. 'Experiment?'

'If you must call it that', he mutters.

Oh, he wants to pop every single bubble. He likes to do that with a tenacity he otherwise keeps for hunting down triple murders.

_**.**_

'Any gruesome murders yet?' I mutter after my morning shower, my wet hair still dripping unpleasantly tickly water droplets on my neck. I roll my shoulders to abate the weird feeling.

Sherlock is not fooled. He smirks and retorts: 'Not visible from where I stand, no. I may need to borrow one of Mycroft's helicopters...'

There's a new type of tourist sightseeing altogether.

I find myself tugging at my undershirt's neck hem, uncomfortably damp. 'You've already found all our neighbours' probable murder suspects, should they croak suddenly, right?'

Sherlock waves off dismissively. 'One needs to pass the time', he says, drawing his speech with ennui.

But I notice better. The detective won't turn away from his new toy, it seems.

'Has anyone spotted you yet?'

'No one, alas... It's amazing what people do without the constraints of society, when they think no one is looking.'

I glance up our bookshelves, where Mycroft once kept his spy cams to trail an intense eye on Sherlock. _Mordor style._

'Or once you get used to onlookers', I add, thoughtfully. I know I have.

The tag on the back of my neck, sewn into my undershirt, is annoying me now. I know there's a pair of scissors somewhere in the kitchen.

'I suppose you would', Sherlock weighs in at that. 'You have very little to hide, John. You are an open book, an honest man. A rare and exotic breed, these days. What you do not tell me, I can read off you like pages in a book. But out there, across the street, there's a cross section of society. It must be representative of the whole. If I have enough angle to watch a relevant number of neighbours, statistically at least one of them should be a murderer, two supermarket clerks, and point six bank robbers.'

'That's why you don't see all those many bank robberies anymore. The robbers cone in decimals now', I interrupt.

'At any time there will be seven to nine crimes in progress, most of them bland and nearly innocuous. Like filling in incorrect tax statements or parking incorrectly. But then there are the other ones, sudden bouts of violence, enemies vying for a prize, astonishing crimes being carried out. A reason to study mankind, John, from a Baker Street window. Forty-five percent in our block will have been exposed to great violence in their life time, however punctual of an instance, but only four percent will carry the marks of violence in them—'

Sherlock's voice dies down just as I'm donning that undershirt again. I turn around. 'I'm listening. Four percent, you were saying.'

I rub the fabric over my war wound scar, absent minded.

He grumps. 'Let's say three percent for the sake of the other ninety nine citizens in a hundred, shall I? John, why can't you get me a nice murder?' he pleads, all round eyes and adorable puppy look.

_Oh, phase three._ After the dejection and abandonment, then the obsession with odd idée fixe, now comes the hustling for something to fill Sherlock's mind.

'Get you a nice murder? You want me to murder for you?' I confirm, patient as a saint.

He rebels at once. 'No, of course not! Where would be the fun in that? If you weren't going to do it voluntarily, you may as well not do it at all! No, John, why can't you get me a client?'

'Where do you reckon I can go find one? Lost and found section at the Tube station?'

He bursts at that. 'Oh, you're useless!'

_Oh! Gee, thanks, mister!_

I turn around abruptly, wondering why I put up with this. I lower my head and sigh into my palm.

Next thing I know, there's an awkward "I'm sorry" mumbled just next to me. I almost jump out of my skin.

'I didn't mean it', he adds, soft eyes trembling and vulnerable green orbs.

He's even abandoned that telescope.

_I'm the only one he's got; a truth exacerbated by lockdown. That's alright, he's the only one I got too._

'You aren't useless, John. In fact, you are quite handy at making tea', he adds the hint, further pressing the teabags box in my hands.

This is Sherlock through and through. Uncomfortable with vulnerability, he needs to have the last haughty word before turning briskly, towards his violin.

The beloved violin being his ultimate consolation, and his true expression in a foreign musical language I'm still learning to decode.

'Fine, tea', I grumble without feeling. Lately we've been clashing more, too consumed by each other's peculiarities in a tight, constant space. We're wearing each other out.

It's already proof of a great relationship that we're surviving this far.

'You do know', I start, in a desperate attempt to get those brain gears rolling, 'that a telescope is only an upside down microscope.'

He blinks. 'That's preposterous.'

He looks genuinely indignant in the name of Science. _Oh, got his attention now._

'Prove me wrong, then', I taunt.

'Where am I going to fit a microscope slide?'

'You can turn it around and—'

'What is it, John?' he follows my stunned gaze towards the window and the parked telescope.

I tilt my head sideways, not even fully aware of my tell.

Sherlock's full attention snaps to that window, onto that row of houses across the street and a ribbon of grey sky above.

'Nothing. I thought I saw something', I add, snapping out of it. I go grab that kettle as if nothing had happened.

The detective rushes to the window and stares out at once. Immediately he drags the telescope by the metal tripod, and he positions the telescope in feverish detail.

'John, I see it too.'

I nod, but he is not looking my way, all his energy focused on the long distance version of his magnifying glass; how could this gift be anything other than a success?

'What do you see?' I whisper, so not to collide with his quick mental processes.

'Architectural plans on the wall, guns, ropes. John, it's a robbery being prepared across the street!'

I smile. _That_ should keep Sherlock busy. The microscope thing was just a distraction. Sherlock is getting too good at spotting my methods.

Honest men only have a handful of tricks.

Like he said, statistically there would be a few crimes in progress at any such cross section of a street, on any given time. As an extension of that rule, at any cross section of a street you should find a few ongoing crimes at any time.

Sherlock just needed a little extra incentive anyway.

_It's all really great. _Because I didn't see a thing, I took a chance, and it paid off. Big time.

'That building, four stories, central stairs and the even number of windows, that's a historical building, converted to a department store. But why would anyone choose now to rob a department store, they are closed, the merchandise is stranded in hope there are still some viable sales. Clearly not a fashion matter, as fashion has been made to wait. But the walls separating from the next door building are plaster and wood, a cheaper alternative used in the historical period of the building. Really bad for fire spreading. In modern society with constant use of those buildings, no one though to correct the structural weak point and easy access to next door, but with the bigger stores closed to commerce for weeks... Alas, the time is running out, they will soon reopen. Departmental bosses are returning to implement changes to the layout and revising stocks. Our burglar needs to make his bold move, asap.'

'What's next door, then?' I ask.

Sherlock allows my question to permeate his monologue naturally, as if my voice had free access to his deductions any day.

'A restaurant, John. But it's not any restaurant, it's one with an inner patio area that faces the back of a jewellers. John', he turns to face me with those intense eyes, 'we have to stop a robbery.'

I nod. 'Can I finish my toast first?' I ask, bringing him one too, with a cup of tea. Breakfast is important.

He again peers through the telescope. 'Yeah, plenty of time. The architectural blue prints have been pinned upside down on the wall. Right now our robbers are planning to infiltrate a crockery and home decor store.'

I smirk, taking a seat on Sherlock's armchair, just propped on the leather arm, watching him work, with the usual feverish and jittery energy of genius.

Crisis averted. For the rest of the morning, if we're lucky.

I take a bite of that piece of toast. I'll have to think of something else to follow. Can't have Sherlock shooting up the walls again. The plaster behind the wallpaper is cracking ominously already.

Of course the Solar System will have to wait. Sherlock is a bit busy right now, doing what he does best. Perhaps I'll need a new mnemonic to teach him the names of the planets in order.

_My Very Eloquent Mate Just Sleuths Ungodly New Puzzles._

No, wait. Pluto's no longer a part of the ensemble.

_My Very Extravagant Mate Just Stalks Unknowing Neighbours._

Ah, yes. That's more like it. Keeping up with the times.

_**.**_


	76. Chapter 76

_A/N: I__ played chapter ping-pong looking for an idea I might have left behind, and came up with this thought of returning to John's past, and the marks left on places he left behind. Seemed good work for rainy days. I'm hoping to ship shape this into something interesting, but hasn't got onto the quickest start. Just laying some ground. -csf_

* * *

_**1.**_

_"You look exhausted. You could use a day outing, a short break."_

That's what my friend told me in that impossibly alluring voice that drips of mysteries and possibilities beyond my wildest imagination.

_"We'd be back before nightfall, John",_ he added, sealing the deal. In fact, whilst a very real, very troublesome virus is out there preying on us, only limited, cautious, thought through ideas will meet my approval.

We all know the conspiracy theorists, the hedonistic fatalists, and the self-appointed exceptions out there who dismiss the virus and carry on regardless, in merry enjoyment of their freedom principle to underline breaking all rules, and every piece of pandemic advice. I happen to meet loads of those, in my line of work, when I'm working the hospital wards with the most layers of personal protective equipment. Both armies in battle, when confronted, make for sharp contrast.

To my friends I admit no gratuitous foolishness. I very much want to keep them around, instead of meeting them in the hospital wards. That has caused some friction with a few, made others unreasonably hide their actions from me (lest I be the nagging voice of reason), and exposed everyone's personal ability to limit their freedoms for the collective good.

In essence, it's the ones of us that have been witnesses to this virus' handiwork that less can abstract themselves of its ruthless efficiency and its consequences, so it's understandable that to some others the virus is a mere inconvenience, long past its shelf date.

Hey, I've had enough of it myself too.

But I can't quite tell the virus to bugger off, now can I?

I can be cautious, though, and try to keep it at bay, so I don't get infected, and I don't pass it on. Having a flatmate keeps me on high alert. I wouldn't want Sherlock to catch it from me, brought from the hospital or contracted in some ill conceived outing. All I can do is keep going, press on, and wait for better times, in the certainty that I will have learnt to appreciate them in their absence.

Going to a pub night will be an event short of releasing fireworks, going to visit grandma will once again be a valid excuse to turn down an unwanted romantic proponent, and an old familiar restaurant will feel virtually unbeknown (while Sherlock is showered by lavish attention from the owner, the head chef, or the twin old ladies sat at the next table).

Even boredom will not quite ever be the same again. Nor the living room wall that Sherlock still shots at – now lined with thick lead just under the wallpaper; it absorbs the shocks, much to Sherlock's disappointment and earlier hopes of sparks and ricochet.

Sometimes we feel that future is close, other times it mocks us with its impossible distance. As if string theory and quantum physics alone could describe its dual distance from us. Both near and distant at the same time.

Another sort of distance is in hand right now. The merciful escape from London that Sherlock has sprung on me, and I most graciously accepted.

I'm not sure if there's an actual case. Maybe right now it doesn't matter. The lullaby of familiar routines, as we once again crisscross the country just like when we always had a case on hand, is a welcomed comeback to a freer grasp of our promised futures.

_**.**_

'John, have you packed?' the detective asks casually, early in the morning.

'No need to pack. You said we'd be back tonight, remember?' I retort, pouring him a cup of coffee from the pot. 'No overnight stays allowed just yet? Hotels and B&Bs closed. Big bad virus, does that ring a bell?'

'If you say so', he says, sipping the coffee. 'In which case you should hurry up. We've got a few hours on the road ahead of us.'

'Where are we going?'

He smirks, full of amusement. He won't tell me. Making a big secret out of it. If pressed, he'd probably say that he likes to keep me on my toes, keep me guessing. I would say that's part of his DNA, the illusionist taking a live bunny off his top hat, making a show of it.

'Alright, Sherlock. Just tell me I don't need a frock coat like that other time we ended up "undercover" at the Opera House.'

He chuckles maliciously.

'John, you are perfectly acceptable the way you are, you always are to me.'

We need to get on the road, asap. He's getting all mushy on me now.

Lockdown Sherlock is openly needy and freely mushy. It probably comes down to him enjoying making me discomfited. Well, if it helps him pass the time... it keeps the living room's lead lined wall together.

_**.**_

The view from the car's passenger seat denotes no real change from those times when face masks outside medical settings belonged to those sci-fi movies with sticky endings. Nice open gardens rimmed by rose bushes and hedges, clusters of architecturally cloned houses, fast lanes, agricultural fields, power lines, reservoirs mirroring the quiet skies in vast expanses of water, endless miles of road.

It's easy to pass the time with Sherlock if we engage in a little healthy competition. Everything from Make a Book Title Silly by adding a word (which Sherlock started himself unwitting and innocently, a particularly useful art for any crime blogger with a nonstarter of The Curious Case—, The Adventure of—, The Extraordinary Enigma—, or The Mysterious Affair—) to Speaking in Mycroft's Pedantic Way to describe house chores (a game in which I'm getting quite good, with all the exposure; just remember to lather the flat-surfaced crockery with a warm, surface-active detergent solution in firm circular motions of clockwise motion to, well, wash a plate).

Soon Sherlock is diverting to a small town ahead, that he will have chosen over many intricate and enigmatic thought processes.

_**.**_

'It's a town. A bit empty and shut down, tentatively restarting like so many others. Why this place, Sherlock?'

The detective and I are walking about on the open streets, keeping away from passers-by, noticing the slow traffic, going past boarded up shops. A bit like experimental ghosts patrolling the town. No wonder there are so few people about. Most commerce has been left abandoned as it was the day it locked up.

I notice Sherlock hasn't answered me. One glance tells me he's scrutinizing me attentively. It won't even phase me anymore, his disproportionate attention laser focused on me. In fact, I like it. It feels like a constant presence, a omnipresent company I can rely on.

Finally Sherlock looks away to the slowly awakening high street.

'Because of you, John.'

'You chose this place because of me?' I repeat. I'm surprised.

'You once lived here, John. Your family had some itinerant habits, having moved around the country more than other families would have done. London is where you really feel at home. But there are pieces of you, John, all over the land, and I'm curious enough to retrieve my blogger's memories as I find tiny hints of regionalisms, in your wordings, in the way you button your shirt bottom up, or in the delectable choice of custard over a blueberry muffin.'

'Taught you something new there? You really have a sweet tooth, mate.'

'Do not attempt to diverge my attention, John. I have chosen this town because John Watson has walked these streets in short trousers, as a big blue eyed and sunshine blond haired boy. You don't—' he chooses his next words carefully '—you don't have close relations that you rely on or connect with on a regular basis.'

'Except for Harry', I mutter. My self-sabotaging, recovering alcoholic sister.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. 'We should save her for our car journey back', he suggests with a smirk. I scoff and giggle at the same time. Sherlock settles on a genuine smile he forgets to hold back. 'How I understand you, John. I've got Mycroft.'

'Yeah, but—' I collect my thoughts.

'How could I possibly find out your childhood years from the places you've lived in, you mean?' he helps me. I nod. He shrugs. 'Works sometimes with murder suspects.'

'In a book, perhaps. Or by phone interviews. We don't actually drive over.'

'You're my assistant. I thought it advisable to make a bigger effort.'

I squint. There's something he isn't telling me. Not yet. But he will.

I'll find what he's up to yet.

_**.**_

'Your primary school, John.'

Funny, I remember the playground as being a lot bigger, and the tall windows in the old traditional building as never ending. Back then the classrooms had chalk boards. _Gosh, I feel old._

'Look, I don't know what you got into your head, mate, but I'm not dying. What's up with the life review?'

Sherlock literally shudders and glares my way.

'You are clearly a healthy male specimen, John. You keep yourself fed, sleep enough hours on a regular basis, and don't suffer from chronic illnesses. Besides, I keep you fit and occupied. Idleness is the devil's playground, they say... No, John, I came to find out more about you.'

'Oh.' Easily I ignore all the childish jibes and focus on the relevant piece of deduction. 'You're that _bored_ that you want to see how I became me, find out my formative years, what tickles my inner fancy, hoping to find a hidden skeleton or two?'

Sherlock answers only too seriously. 'Absolutely, John. I'm glad you are so understanding. Shall we start then? We need to get you home by midnight, lest your carriage turns back into an aubergine, or something alike', he lastly rests, as he heads forward with conviction.

_**.**_

I enumerate, going through the fingers in my hand.

'Where did I sit in class? What was my favourite subject? Who was my best mate? What sort of games I played? Sherlock, are you planning on writing my biography?'

He shrugs, nonplussed. 'Simple questions, John. Unless you have something to hide, of course.'

I dramatically sigh, rolling my eyes. Having jumped the fence to infiltrate the school's premises, we are now sitting on the playground seesaw – I'll let you guess which one's feet are no longer touching the ground – so I just choose that last finger.

'There was one question you didn't ask me.'

'Just one?' he mocks. He's been holding back, you see.

'This is kind of an important one.'

'Elucidate me, John, by all means.'

'_When did you see your first corpse, John?'_

Sherlock's face transforms at that, he leans forward – the seesaw levelling a bit – and demands, hungrily:

'Tell me all about it, John. Leave no gory detail out.'

'Yeah, but not even you can solve this cold case, it's been decades!'

His grey eyes sparkle like fireworks.

_Uh-oh. _I just set him a challenge, haven't I?

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	77. Chapter 77

_A/N: Very delayed, I know, sorry. Work happened, and work alone pays the bills. -csf_

* * *

_**2.**_

Sherlock was really, _really_ bored. So he turned to me as a source of inspiration on what he could do to pass the time. He went a bit too far in his interest over his personal blogger, for he decided to reconstruct my childhood. Or part of it; although I don't doubt he'll return as my biography sooner or later, when once again he's got nothing going on.

Whilst keeping his own childhood highlights shrouded in mystery. It really isn't fair. I'm the actual blogger, nearly biographer, here. _But no, he had to copy my style._

My best mate lured me for a day outing, saying I needed a restful break. Then he drove me hundreds of miles to a town I once knew. Or thought I knew. In my child eyes, it was home for a couple of years. Now it feels oddly disconnected, like an item of clothing growing up. You still looked at it, a t-shirt depicting your telly heroes, it still appealed to you, but you could no longer wear it, and inevitably one day you'd have to give it up. Meanwhile you hid it in the back of the wardrobe so mum wouldn't throw it away.

That day, I've also realised so far, that day hasn't come yet.

'That was the chemists. Back when mum wasn't doing so well, but she could still manage. That was a police station, yes, I'm sure of it. Guess it's a block of flats now. Sherlock why are you smirking?'

He looks secretly amused, pacing leisurely at my side. I jab his ribs, and he doubles down theatrically before surrendering the information:

'Your accent is changing subtly, John. Just from the proximity with these streets. You are indeed priceless, John. A perfect sponge, easy to influence and manoeuvre, a gullible and suggestible man who once lead soldiers to battle with a steely determination. You are complex, paradoxical even, but— _John!'_

Yeah, I just tripped my friend and he almost smashed his nose on the pavement. There. _Must have been influenced somehow._

_No, wait, no. It was all me. I enjoyed it too._

He chuckles deeply.

'You know, John, childish behaviour is hardly a defence for your perfectly trained personality. Don't be ashamed, it's a natural effect of years of strict hierarchic and professional achievement. In the hospital, like once in the battlefield, you are the complete opposite. You demand attention, bark orders, enthuse followers into battle. I know you, John, I've seen you in action in all your might and grace. I would follow you into hades myself. And then there's Baker Street, where you feel safe, where you melt into a house cat, John. By my side, you don't have to choose a posture. You just do whatever comes naturally, and it's a relief, I'd imagine.'

'I'm not even listening.' But I roll my eyes for emphasis.

'You can pretend to others, but I know I capture all your attention— _John?_ John, will you listen to me! I was talking to you!'

'Hmm?' I retort distractedly, crossing the street and gunning for a suburban house. I jump the low fence easily, Sherlock, immediately on my six, does the same.

If he recalls this is someone else's private property, he's not too fussed.

I turn around as I hear the tumble my friend suddenly contends with. Can't really hide a smirk. I know how to goad Sherlock Holmes, and have him follow my every move.

_We're just too good at pushing each other's buttons._

_Overall, we are a team on the level. A co-partnership, natural and fluid._

I just about manage to steady the genius, when my gaze mechanically follows the uneven ground. I find a metal edge of a box, perhaps, sticking out of the damp turf.

'I can't believe it', I murmur, letting go of Sherlock, barely making sure he's standing up; by now, all my attention is demanded by that metal geometry rising from the soil, protruding proudly half hidden by crumbled leaves.

'John? This is the house you grew up in. Of should I say, one of them. This house.' He takes in the old building, in a sort of transcendent awe.

He got that deduction right, though what he sees in those old walls that might possibly interest him, I cannot phantom.

'Hang in there for me, will you?' I gesture at him some lost attempt at explanation. The past coming up to meet me unexpectedly.

'What did you find?' he turns around, on a sudden scent.

I smirk, amused. 'Time capsule. I buried this - why, must have been—' My brain quickly whirls through the maths and I decide instead upon: 'ages ago.'

Sherlock sniggers behind my back. 'Around four decades, you'd say?' he pretends to help.

_Not helping. _Feeling too old here, as I kneel on the damp soil, the wetness of it seeping through the fabric of my jeans.

'I forgot about it', I say, but I don't know who I'm talking to.

Maybe to Sherlock, he's always there. Perhaps to myself, or to the child I once was, hopeful and full of dreams, burying this secret in the back garden.

_One day I'll dig it up again_, I had been so sure. A fulfilled prophecy, thanks to Sherlock's meddling.

'John.' Sherlock lays a concerned hand on my shoulder. 'Sure that's your old lunch box?'

'Yeah', I say in a broken whisper.

'If it turns out to be someone's dead pet, can I keep it?'

Very slowly I turn my face towards the expectant genius. _Manners, Sherlock..._

'It's not. This is my past. The treasure trove of a seven year old.'

'Neat', he comments. Sherlock seems genuinely interested in my past. As if in his high-functioning world all humanity was boring with the exception of me. Somehow I don't fit the mould. I don't belong in the generalisations he acquired to deal with the quotidian, and that enthrals him. So long as I surprise him once in a while, I keep him steadily hoping for more. The funny thing is, I don't do it on purpose. That's why it's so odd to me. That Sherlock is convinced I'm not ordinary at all.

I'll let him keep this reasoning fallacy.

_I'm just John._

Sherlock is not opposed to helping me dig the ground, with our bare hands, extracting the metal box from the compacted soil. It finally gets released of the strong hold, raised from the earth, and it's a far cry from the shiny box I remember laying on a deep hole I had just dug by the old oak. Now speckled with rust and discoloured, it also feels smaller as I hold it up with my adult hands.

'Key?' Sherlock asks, with the seriousness of a professional.

I scoff. 'Lost ages ago! Will you do the honours or shall I?'

He follows my gesture as I'm ready to pick up a lost brick and smash the thing.

'It'd be my honour', he interjects before I assail the container. Taking out his set of thin nail files from a jacket pocket, he puts an honest effort into picking the tiny lock.

I'm amused by just how serious he's acting. It's a silly memento of a child's imaginative play. I can't remember what it holds. Could be a very old, very stale, very mouldy, ham sandwich for all I can remember.

The lock snaps. It doesn't quite unlock as much as it breaks, too oxidized to put up more than a feeble fight to protect my childhood secrets.

I see Sherlock leaning back, holding his weight on his ankles, patiently giving me the next action.

He's really taking this too seriously...

I lift the cranky, rusty lid and peek inside, Sherlock's face just over my shoulder.

There's a yoyo, a Batmobile (but no Batman action figurine, I think Harry had nicked it), a few foreign coins I had amassed somehow, and a few pieces of yellowed paper.

I turn my attention to the Batmobile, as Sherlock fingers the papers.

'There's only Robin in there.'

'That won't do, John. You need your Batman.'

'I doubt Harry still has it, though. I think she threw it onto the roof while I was crying and demanding she hand it back...?' I eye the roof suspiciously through the blurry memories.

'Your sister has the soul of a true villain', he appreciates, somehow both serious and amused.

'All older siblings do, mate. You should know.'

'Indeed... John, I'm intrigued by this family picture.'

He hands me a square piece of sepia toned paper. I have to squint to see the boy with a huge smile and big eyes, under a bowl haircut that honoured the decade I grew up in. A bullish looking girl sulked in a dress she hated, sat tomboy-ish on a fence. Mum and dad held hands by our side, making my heart skip a beat. It's been a long time since I thought of them that age. They look so young, full of a liveliness that age stole from them. There's also the house, newer, fresher, and a family friend leaning with his arms crossed loosely on the fence.

'Crikey, it's been a while... What's with the pocket magnifying glass?' I recognise on the detective's hand.

'I want to conduct studies on the image. I won't damage it, rest assured, it's a purely observational exercise.'

I shrug. 'Sure, knock yourself out. I'm taking this box with us back to London. Hardly a theft, seeing I buried it here in the first place.'

'Naturally, John. I recognise that smile and it's a perfect match to the boy identified in this old picture.'

I chuckle, amused, and steer the genius off site through the unlocked front gate, as his got his nose glued to that magnifying glass. What he intends to find in that old, grainy photograph is beyond me.

_**.**_

'You mentioned a rotting corpse, John', Sherlock reboots some time after.

Sadly, it occurs right in the queue for the fish and chips shop, as we line outside in the hope of an ambulant style meal.

The two blokes behind us, glance at us in sudden distrust and find some more space between us than the strictly necessary according to the social distancing recommendations. _Neat, I'll keep this trick in mind next time others in the queue are getting too friendly and close._

'Well, I didn't find it at home.'

'Shame', he comments, offhand. I frown. Does he mean we could gave explored my memory already back at the house, or that I lost some childhood opportunity to become more like him?

_When did Sherlock explore his first rotting corpse?_ My friend is very precocious, I would venture he was still in the cradle.

I try to recall what it was like for me.

'There are some woods, Sherlock, over the other side of the train tracks. We used to go there as kids, to do what kids do. Run around, play hide and seek, climb trees, look for bird nests. One day we found a hut, the thing was nearly collapsing on its own. Went inside and _voila_.'

'Naturally you called the authorities or a responsible adult.'

'My friends did. I vowed to stay behind and guard the finding.' Suddenly I need to scratch the back of my neck. 'I may have poked it with a stick somewhat.'

'Perfectly understandable, John.'

'—I mean, the poor sod deserved more respect—'

'I do it often myself. No better way to assess the extension of _rigor_ _mortis_ in the presence of potentially toxic substances on the body.'

I blink. 'You poked a dead bloke? When? You don't let Scotland Yard catch you doing that!'

'I won't be so careful any longer, now you confessed to your partiality in poking blokes, John. Dead blokes, I think your expression was.'

_All of this._ Just wrong.

Sherlock proceeds: 'Just last week you insisted I waited for you to don gloves and poke Lestrade's dead body at the scene.'

'By then it wasn't poking, I was checking for a pulse!'

'So you say.'

I look around, furious now. The two blokes behind us have given up on the chippy and are nowhere to be seen.

'This is inappropriate conversation for meal times, Sherlock', I hiss, but he fully ignores me, as he moves up and orders exactly what I wanted, down to the last detail. He even orders some chips for himself, and I know he'll pick some of my meal when I'm not looking. He's like that.

'Alright then', I mutter, shaking my head and releasing some tension. The attention to detail in the order was flattering, even if the available menu was not that long to begin with. Sherlock always knows me. 'Let's park ourselves somewhere and I'll tell you all about it over the food, you're clearly not going to get queasy on me.'

He wolfs back a predatory smile. 'Neither will my army doctor.'

I roll my eyes, what is he like?

_Sherlock is going all softie, I tell you._

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	78. Chapter 78

_A/N: Sorry, I'm missing a lot of the things I did, that filled up my inspiration bucket, so I'm putting that last one on hold (yet another one!) and putting this incomplete weird drabble forward. I don't know how to explain it, it has been chasing me for weeks now. __-csf_

* * *

_**I.**_

'Think of it as the underworld, John... Minus the demons and all that folklore.'

Sherlock's words are quietly chuckled beside me. I turn to him, that solid, tall, familiar figure that seems to accompany me always, to find my friend quietly watching me.

'Breathe, John', he dares to add, full of cheek. He knows that once again he's outdone himself, and he lives for these moments; dazzling the audience, gripping its attention, luring me in.

He said "wannabe go for a walk" and we ended up 20,000 leagues under the sea, give or take. It's definitely a world apart from our ordinary lives.

_Breathe_, he told me. I seem to have forgotten that breathing is not boring, despite all the rightfulness with which I lectured Sherlock in the past, so I now resume the autonomic mechanism. Letting myself sag back against the worn out leather chair on a wooden frame that creaks to the melody of inner woodworm tunnels carved inside the frame.

I shut my eyes tightly, pressing my eyelids firmly, tuning everything out; the chair, the dusky room, Sherlock's eager running analysis of his commonplace flatmate. Finally I reopen my eyes wide. The same scenario greets me again, a landscape of wonders, full of undiscovered world undertones. I had half hoped it was a hallucination; having foolishly started taking up Sherlock's coffee offers again. It might still be a dream. I may not be awake, drifting through my subconscious stream of thoughts, concepts and ideas, wrapped in superfluous layers of symbolism.

_Nope._ This is a far stretch from my usual imagination limits.

I'll still settle for that. _It's a dream. A good one_.

Passively sitting back, I'm taking in the scene around us.

We're deep down on the ocean floor, in a small manmade craft – I should call it a submarine, really, or perhaps a pod connected to the shore above of a mother ship in wait. From what I can tell, the edges of the small room disguised by shadow and darkness, we are in a contained space, devoid of artificial lights. Yet a quicksilver glow of deferred light shimmers across the room, reflected off the waters' natural undulation. More diffuse light passes through the bay window we're facing, a contraption of regular staccato angles forming a curved window, a half-moon crescent that separates is from the cold waters beyond. The glass is old, deforming the view beyond through occasional veins in the molten silica beds. It reminds me of an aquatic version of the old greenhouses in Kew gardens. Floor to ceiling tightly fitted glass panels in an engineering masterpiece, a lost piece of human ingenuity and defiance, built long before a standard production of Navy submarines. Bearing the hallmarks of a crazy scientist's lair, some shed sized live in apparatus set up long in the past history, destined to explore those deep seas that, to the day, remain an unforgiving frontier of human knowledge.

Very well built, in fact, considering we've not yet been buried alive by the depths of water above us. The steel structure groans and moans under the water column pressure compounded above, so we must be quite a way down. Only a fraction of sunlight seeps through the compact body of water, bathing our controls room – or observation room, or autonomous laboratory – in a peaceful, timeless glow from the evaded world above, to which we must return at some point.

Again I take a better look inside. There are echoes of the eclectic 221B decor in here, in this jumbled living room, library, laboratory, arts studio, music room and, yes, controls room. Our aligned chairs take centre stage over a Persian rug – definitely not Navy standard protocol. The control panel is fitted to the side of the big glass window, left of my armchair. It's an enigmatic collection of levers, pulleys, buttons, analogue dials, barometer, thermometers and clock faces, plus the all sorts navigational aids that litter the room. No sight of modern instruments, like radars, autopilots, computers. This is from an older era, before deep sea exploration got standardised, sanitised, parameterised. It reeks of freedom, daring possibilities, dangerous adventures. _I like that._

Whoever the lost scientist and dreamer that built this vessel, they wouldn't have been able to foresee the progress and commodities we take for granted today. No Wi-Fi, no computers, no recording cameras.

Their advantage was their mad drive, the reckless experimentation, the dangerous first-hand testing of their creations.

_Wow, Sherlock must be right at home in this setting._

He is very much like that. _Recklessly endangering our lives, by unspoken mutual consent._

'Why bring me here, Sherlock?'

'You looked bored.'

'Oh.' I gulp. How can every daring impossibility be so easy to grasp for Sherlock?

'You seemed to benefit from a change in scenery, I knew of this place, it was uninhabited and safe, so... when I say _safe_...'

I grin. 'You don't mean it at all.'

I wouldn't have it any other way. He knows it, he grins too. For a moment our twin set of grins mirror each other.

'What? Is there a giant squid out there, captain Nemo?' I mock.

Out returns to an absolute seriousness.

'Something far more dangerous than the giant squid. Cleverer and more perfidious, I should imagine', my friend answers gravely. 'Something I haven't yet had the chance to catalogue. But it shouldn't bother us today.'

'How can you be sure?'

'Today it studies us', Sherlock says, pointing into the sleek dark waters. I follow his lead and get a last glimpse of something eclipsing into the murky folds of water.

It looked frighteningly like the black iris of a giant eye blinking shut.

I gulp drily.

No, not sure that was what I saw. Could be my imagination. I could be in a dream, right?

With a weight sinking in my stomach – a terrible giant creature out there would hardly detain Sherlock on our little stroll – I get on my feet and approach that glass.

The glass pane feels cold under my fingertips. An impertinent barrier when I want to move beyond the restrictions and explore this new world.

I glance back at Sherlock, who has taken a seat in the other armchair.

_We still just might._

_**.**_

_**TBC **_


	79. Chapter 79

_A/N: Hello again. Here's the second part. Just a quiet diversion from routine and insistent pressures of daily life. Might pick it up again one day, and turn it into a bigger story. -csf_

* * *

_**2.**_

Ahead of Sherlock and I, the vast openness of the deep blue sea, for a yard or so, before the distance itself is engulfed in dusky, murky lack of detail. It intrigues me. And I vow to explore it some more, if at all possible. I want to stay, and indulge in my curiosity, in this fragile world, so far removed from the straining tensions above the surface. It appeals to me, the unknown, for it holds in itself the answer to the mystery of life. And, just like at the surface, you can't really see where it leads. An intriguing world of possibilities to be revealed to a patient observer.

There is so much to investigate already just besides our deep maritime pod. Peaceful water undulations at the beck and call of invisible streams, created by imperceptible changes in temperature and consequent density, scatter the daylight filtered from above. Not just floating atoms of Hydrogen and Oxygen, but a constantly evolving soup of elemental and multicellular organisms, feeding, multiplying, living and streaming peacefully in multi-layered strata.

Jellied creatures, opalescent yet translucent, like upside down bowls, and several shooting, stringy appendices, dancing to a silent operetta of drama and grandeur, propelled through the recoiling and opening like petals on a flower with those perfectly timed jellified arms, of tantalising beauty and deadly toxicity. A shoal of silvery bullet-shaped fish transits by, in military precision; soldiers in a rank. They all turn and rush away, slapping forked tails as a bigger, predatory fish crashes the scene; the arrival of a bully in the playground. It too gently drifts off, too big, heavy and lazy to waste energy in the pursuit of a difficult catch, so it trails off, searching for easier meal; patrolling the pond.

Far below surface, at the gravelled sea bed, wavy strands of algae attempt bravely to photosynthesise the little daylight available, lacklustre as it filters through the body of water. They are reddish in tone, breaking contrast in the sea of teals, greys, blues, greens and silvers, with a crisp dry, springy appearance of tumbleweed in a desert. Tiny fish frivously weaving in and out might just break it away. A hide-and-seek game played by eager infants under the matronly watchful eye of an elder.

More furtive movements draw my eye to a proud creature lifting itself of the sandy depths, up until now disguised cleverly as an immobile rock. Slowly a tentacle unravels, extending away from the wobbly, ugly shaped head and those dark, wistful eyes. Bright yellow fish, flat as a pancake, drift past, under the wistful gaze.

A festival of colour and natural extravaganza, shape and function beyond our surface creatures' constraints, fill this deep underwater theatre. It runs smoothly as a collective society, a world unknown to us humans on the surface.

No wars, no crimes, no hidden motives, hinder the peace and collective wholesomeness that keeps this world tightly knitted. Interconnected, vulnerable and dependent, it holds itself together through the importance of every element in the chain. What we see, limited by the constraints of our vision, the morphology of our eyes and the anatomy of firing synapses deep in our brains, tells us only partially about the fullness of industry that built this underwater empire.

Here there are endless possibilities of animal, vegetable, or another, altogether, species. How they may look like, how they adjust to their environment and thrive. It reminds me of a submerged alien world, where form and purpose follow their own cryptic set of rules. _Sherlock's underworld_. The demons lurking in the shadows, in intense cooperation with the peaceful dwellers.

For who would have thought all aliens would be little green men?

We are privileged spectators from our pod of safety, as long as it can encase us in a safe expanded bubble of air, keeping us alive.

I glance over at Sherlock, wanting to ask him how he conjured yet another brilliant magic trick, if it is indeed safe, and how long we have here before we're forced back onto the surface. _Would I leave if he told me it wasn't all that safe? _My words die on my lips as I see reflected in Sherlock's misty coloured eyes the depths of these unexplored oceans, as if he was indeed a part of them. It's funny, I finally got a simile for Sherlock's eye colour. They are the shifting colours of the deep sea, of promised lands and strange alien creatures, of possibilities far beyond our wildest imagination. _It suits him, too._

'Judging by your current levels of wordlessness, this setting meets your approval', he impossibly smirks as he says those casual words, glancing at his wristwatch.

Got anywhere special to be?

_But how—_ would be the question to invoke, it's always the unspoken question with Sherlock Holmes. So I dismiss it with prejudice. _It's probably all a dream anyway. A nice dream._

'Where to, Sherlock?' I ask instead.

'Far and beyond', he answers, his honeyed voice quiet and deep as the sea. 'Wherever we like.'

He watches as I take hold of the main controls power lever.

'Just drop it John', he advises me, unrolling a huge parched old map from the table besides his chair. We'll go where adventure may take us.

I pull that lever down, feeling the gentle propelling of the hidden engine. A burst of air bubbles encapsulates us for a moment, scaring away the smaller fish, waving the drifting strands of algae, revolving the waters in burst of air bubbles.

I smile at last, refilling those reservoirs of Hope that recent trying times have emptied.

_Yes, I'll have that. Endless possibilities to explore._

'Turn left on the octopus, and straight ahead to a deep and narrow gorge', he directs, as an avid explorer of foreign lands. 'There's something more I need to show you, at sunset.'

'Sunset?' I repeat, and frown. Sundown will make this an inhospitable and dark filled dangerous place to be. Ragged edges on solid rocks, protruding from the sea bed, Invisible in the pitch dark maelstrom of deep swirling waters. larger creatures will come out of hiding, biding their opportunity to prey on us. I wonder for a second, what weapons of war Sherlock and I bring to this alien world. Would they be enough to keep us safe, to grant us a place of security, fighting for harmony in this unseen world?

Perhaps we do not belong here, and soon will be the time to return to our own world. but before that... I want to take advantage of this break in time and space, of this wondrous opportunity to be a part of something bigger, spectacular, intriguing, mischievous and unexplored, I want to dive deep and let the surrounding borders be a part of who I am, soothing me as if I were another one of those fish drifting in peaceful turns of tide. It can't last long. It is not in our nature. As humans we will try to contain, inspect, dissect, and control these engineered wonders of nature. Breaking the magician's charm.

I vow to keep this place a secret, a memory shared by Sherlock and I, in order to keep it shielded from the greedy hands of the society above.

I look around me in the quiet darkened control room, and I understand I'm not the first to make this decision. Sherlock and I exchange glances full of synchronised intentions.

These quiet waters blurring into an indistinct mist of colours as my consciousness drifts back to reality.

I'm slowly waking up, peacefully slumbering in my bed. Safe, content and warm.

I vow to remember how it feels like, this freedom, this daring posture to face yet another mechanic routine filled day, as I blink myself awake in my warm bed. The alarm clock fighting for attention.

Feeling refreshed after a good night's sleep.

Then I'm startled, and push myself up all in one go.

'Sherlock, why is there water running?' I ask a second later, all quiet now dispelled, as I rushed downstairs to quench whatever burst water pipe is running riot in 221B's bathroom. I can hear the water gushing everywhere.

Sherlock must have poured concentrated sulphuric acid down the bathtub drain again!

_Damn it, Sherlock!_ How many times?

_**.**_


	80. Chapter 80

_A/N: A lot of us, amid lockdown uncertainty, have been experiencing difficulties sleeping right in these out-of-whack times. In England measures have been eased a lot, but scientists are concerned we may not be able to avoid a second wave of the virus. In many parts of the world countries are just now getting to grips with the uphill part of the battle, so here's some of what I learned so far – stay strong (strength does not always have to look heroic, just Hold On), keep in touch with those who may look strong but are alone or vulnerable (even when you don't know what to say, know that feeling forgotten is worse than receiving a weird call about Marvel superheroes, trust me), and make sure you keep in tune with the things you love and that make you feel in a happy place (it's where we find our strengths). -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'John?' I call out yet again, this time his name carries an undertone of uncertainty I fail to disguise. I push aside his laptop from my lap and stretch my legs off the leather armchair. It's not like John to ignore me like this. He's usually... _obedient_. He often has the nerve to passive-aggressively undermine his response by huffing and dragging his feet – _"Sherlock, I was sleeping, upstairs in my bed, what the hell do you need to activate the fire alarm for?"_ – but John always shows up nonetheless.

I can still elicit curiosity and wonder in the doctor, and I shudder to think of the day he no longer cares. Because that's what people do, they stop caring, stop paying attention, relationships and families break down. It's been a while I've known John Watson, the most brave and constant man I have ever met. Something tells me we're defying the odds.

'John...' I whisper his name, a panicky inflexion permeating my breathlessness, catching me by surprise. I was wandering in my Mind Palace, I lost track of time. Returned to Baker Street a few minutes ago. _Where is John?_

_I grumpily hope he's not gone and got himself kidnapped yet again, by either Mycroft or Moriarty._

No, not Jim Moriarty, Jim is regrettably dead. Shame, he was entertaining as a master criminal. The world is undoubtedly duller now.

And Mycroft usually returns John after a quick meeting, too busy meddling with the world rulers.

In the kitchen, the kettle is at room temperature, the sliced bread has gone both stale and mouldy, the butter in the fridge is suitably cold, _and_ _greasy_ (I observe with dismay, reaching for the tea towel). No signs of the good doctor in the small crowded space. Domestic appliances and essential labware undisturbed, I notice, bewildered. My test tubes are still scattered on the draining board, now completely dry.

A slight whimper escapes my throat and I push it down. _Don't be a fool, you did not imagine it._

John _has_ returned home.

I close my eyes and press the lids with the palms of my hands. Sometimes I still think he's gone. Left Baker Street. The sensory memory of Loneliness is crushing when it takes you unaware. It sags the breath out of my chest, claws tightly at the vital organs with the vicious grip of despair. _Missing John is like missing a part of myself._

You can do this.

Call yourself a detective?

_John is back. You can feel his presence lingering in 221B. Like a blood hound on a trail, you can scent the evidence everywhere around you._

There's a paperback novel abandoned on the window sill. It's been there for three weeks. It really is rubbish, even John thinks so. I remorselessly throw it in the bin. _Should John ask me about the book, I'll just tell him I never saw it, why would I tamper with this books?_

John's brown shoes rest in the landing, very scuffed, and worn out at the soles, but still his favourite pair. He scuffed them scaling the copper domed roof of a known London landmark. _To catch me as I almost fell off St. Paul's Cathedral. John gave me unapologetic hell for the state of his shoes for days after that. It was hardly about the shoes. He hyperventilated every time he saw me after the dome, nursing that stupid gunshot graze that made me lose balance in the first place._

The doctor's shoulder bag is hanging on the railing as the wood gently curves to hug the spiral of the stairs. _The smell of hospital grade disinfectant and John's own musty sweat lingers on the strap. Can't be 12 hours old._

On the ascending steps a dark huddled heap of rain-proofed cotton and polyester blend in a nondescript shade of faded black jacket.

John is usually tidier than this, it's a permanent trait that Her Majesty's Army instils in its hopefuls. Tired then, really tired. Weary to the point of disconnect. John Watson at his endurance limit.

It's usually me, proudly carrying John to the brink of his resistance. _Not this time._

Last night, judging by the dried spots of fresh mud on the rim of the sole of his shoes. Work, then. Another difficult shift at the hospital.

No late snack or takeaway leftover. John just slipped past me and headed upstairs while I studied the Camden's Heads Collector's case, with my eyes closed, meandering in my Palace. I wonder if John said something, tried to talk to me, but I didn't listen, too absorbed by a difficult case. I processed the mystery in my sleep, arriving to a satisfactory conclusion. I already texted Lestrade the solution, as I regained full faculties this morning. I hope I woke Lestrade too. Normal people sleep too much, and it's a waste of potential.

That was a while ago. Lestrade's got all the details now to go apprehend the morbid head collector and John doesn't know it yet. It's demoralising when John doesn't pay attention like this.

Where is John? Still sleeping it off?

I may have to give him a piece of my mind.

Slowly I climb those first steps, not without some trepidation. _This is John's territory._ It's been a long time I've been up here, on a quick run to get the doctor to wake up and follow me on a new case.

Even on the nights John is filled with terror and relentless nightmares, I usually let the violin bridge the distance, or make enough noise with my thermite experiments to rouse him in his early stages of inner fights.

It's been years since I came up quietly, with a sense of mission, to John's territory.

I have a quirked smile, as I first lay eyes on the landing.

John still sleeps with the door open. The man who has been to war and relives being attacked by violent enemy ambushes sleeps trustingly with his door open every night. Craving a connection with 221B, London, and me. He knows he sleeps better when I'm around.

In a reflection of his paradoxical nature, he keeps his bedroom door closed during the day. Insisting I shouldn't sprawl my territory into his room, shouldn't snoop around his things and his habits.

'John?' I call, but it's only a perfunctory whisper. I'm at the edge of his bedroom, trying to find a familiar shape in the darkened room.

He turns slightly in the bed, groaning deeply between sleep numbed lips. Eyes closed and brow eased, wrinkles smoothed, moist lips relaxed and slightly parted, still deep in slumber. A thin sheen of sweat over his bare chest, tangled in white bed sheets, as a strip of morning light angles favourably from the window upon his skin, making it look tanned, golden. Long planes of lean muscle gently moving to the rhythm of his deep breathing, smooth plains and angles except for the big scar on his shoulder, a tangled explosion of badly healed tissue and puckered skin, a maelstrom of death and life inextricably linked together forever.

'John.' More urgent now. I can see the movement of his eyes under the lids turn rapid, frantic. His chest rising and lowering at a quickening pace, heading for hyperventilation. Waking up? No, too fast, too messy. A crease embeds itself in his sweat covered brow, his dark blonde strands plastering against the forehead. A nightmare, exploding with the quick pace of a hatching desert storm. _Fascinating really, an immediate object of study._

I've never actually observed a nightmare descend upon the stoic soldier. I'm rooted to the spot, vaguely wondering how long I've been here – _seven minutes, I never stopped counting _– and how John would react if he knew I was cataloguing his nightmares.

_It's a whole new mental index for me._

A bit not good.

'John?' I lay down a hand on his good shoulder, standing by his bedside.

_There's a good reason not to do this._

_If only I remembered that._

_All hell breaks loose._

A strong sudden grip comes from of the sleeping man, yanks me down, over him, straight to the warm mattress as he uncoils like a spring, jumps on me, straddling me against his sweat scented sheets, a hand resting snugly on my throat, another tightly wound into a fist raised to attack, and a wild look in his rapidly blinking eyes.

No wonder his girlfriends never lasted long, if they ever were subjected to this reaction to a wake up call.

Recognition fills those dark blue eyes, giving them their familiar shape back, stripping that layer of panicked self-defence, those murderous instincts still simmering under the surface.

He's John again.

'Sherlock?' His pasty voice is confused, as he lowers that fist with which he was about to hit me, and further stumbles backwards slightly, looking suddenly deflated like a rag doll. 'Is there a case?'

Struggling with invisible memories, storing them back in the deep dungeons of his damaged psyche, but pretending normality. For his sake as much as mine. A sloped downward angle to his shoulders tells me of a delayed reaction of shame, confusion, with the slightest hint of indignation – but he knows better than to think he's got the moral high ground now.

I shake my head silently, giving him a bit more time to adjust to the present moment. _No case. _John is still comfortably sat on me, pinning me to his bed, blinking like a sleepy owl. I make no effort to disentangle, don't want to further add to his recovery time.

'What's up then?' he squints.

'I called you some 15 times. You didn't hear.'

_Sixteen times, but John prefers round numbers._

The doctor seems to regain some notion of himself, past a threshold of normal functioning. As soon as he starts fisting and releasing his hands, as if in a desperate attempt to regain feeling in his extremities, he looks about, blushes slightly and starts dismounting his flatmate. Gently, stone faced, definitely embarrassed.

'Yeah, not a good idea to wake me like that', he answers his own guilt driven thoughts with as much dignity as he can muster, embarrassment trickling from every pore now.

He looks particularly vulnerable as he seems to realise he's shirtless. A thin cotton layer generally one more layer he puts between himself and the world. John always tries to hide the devastation of his scar from me, no matter the trust between us.

I can feel him recede into himself, that shame a big ugly emotion filling his bedroom with more shadows than the window blinds create.

I stumble upon my words to explain myself:

'You didn't answer. The flat was too silent. I didn't like it.'

_I'm sorry, John. Didn't want to make you uncomfortable. You're my best friend._

His sandy flecked blue eyes lock into mine. There he reads the emotions that I cannot string together coherently. John reaches out a surprisingly steady hand and gently touches my ankle, the closest to him, which soft endearment. He pats it reassuringly.

'I suppose it's all right, I nearly did the same thing to you yesterday', he confesses easily. 'As I came home from work, you were drooling on your armchair, Sherlock. You work too much.'

John, _clever_ John. Giving us a smooth way out.

'I don't recall that', I assure him with the exaggerated deflection he expected from easy camaraderie. John gets up – leaving me sprawled in his bed – and clads himself in a dressing gown. Blue, like his eyes, I notice as the morning light intensifies in the room.

'It's true, Sherlock. I couldn't wake you up, get you to bed. You sleep like you're dead to the world, that's how sleep deprived you are.'

I blink. _No, can't be._

'What is it?' He stops, sensing my stop.

This has never happened before. To John? Sure, he's trusting of mankind and trained to sleep through the blaring blasts of war and enemy fire, or a general practitioner's waiting room full of patients. But not me. I'm a picky sleeper. Only in the right setting, with the right conditions, can I shut down each mental process required to allow sleep to take over. And if those conditions are interrupted, I should startle awake at once.

That is how I have trained myself.

_John is the only person I can sleep with in the room._

_Wait, I never actually created that amendment to my sleep protocol._

_This is highly intriguing, and potentially damaging._

—_I want to know more._

'You solved my case, John', I say, propping myself up.

'What case?' In his slight confusion he's more and more the John I know so well. Familiar, belonging in 221B, filling it with his presence.

'Your presence was essential. I only solved the last case as I slept. Without you, John, I would have failed to solve the Camden's Heads Collector's case.'

He chuckles, not taking my epiphany half as serious as he should.

'Right, and you stop my nightmares, Sherlock. We're even.'

I get off that bed and stand straight in front of the amazing John Watson. I will not let him dwell in being ordinary as his god given gift to the world. _How could he ever have got this so wrong?_

'We should sleep together, John.'

He gives me an indecipherable blank look.

_Got all his awake faculties back, then._

'No pun intended', I add, impatiently. 'We both rest more efficiently in each other's presence. Think about it! Mrs H already assumes we sleep together! Must I hear endless objections before you cave in as always? Just drop it, John, what difference does it possibly make what people think anyway?'

He groans, rubbing his face, just that flat note he uses when he thinks I'm failing at social conditioning etiquette.

_Which is often._

'We can fit two beds in this room if that's your problem, John', I immediately solve that one. _Who cares? We're not selling admission tickets. No one would know, John._

Is he seriously expecting me to assault his honour during the night? I'd be lucky to come out of that one alive, judging by the way he woke from his nightmare just now.

'In _my_ room?' he's indignant now. The old eye roll will come next. 'Wait, why not your room?' He further squints, victoriously.

I shrug, nonchalant. 'Fine, you'll sleep in _my_ _room_ tonight then. It's a deal. I shall be ready for you. Come down when you like. No admittance after midnight, though.'

I storm out of his room, leaving him blinking like a confused child.

_**.**_

'It was just a nightmare, Sherlock. I understand it can be disturbing to watch me dwell under a nightmare, but it was just that. It's nothing special. You wouldn't really know, but I get them often enough.'

I raise my eyes from the laptop and analyse swiftly the tense short soldier making brave throwaway remarks, seeking an easy way out to the formidable answer I've come up with to both our problems. _His problem, if he should ask._

It's what I do. I solve problems. I'm internationally known for it. Why should he care that this problem is different from the clients' ones? The lack of detached heads makes for a change of scenery from that last one. Like all mental exercises, there is a solution to be found. Experimentation of a hypothesis under variation of scientifically laid parameters, all easily reproduced, is what it takes to solve this problem as well. We should have done this ages ago! The solution is so simple that it evades the most common intellect.

So why should John always make things harder? Attribute emotional value to a simple trial and error experiment? He makes things more complicate, John always does. By being too emotional he becomes blind to the source of the problem itself, and therefore to the answer that can fix that problem. Reasoning can fix the problem. He should learn to trust his reasoning. He's not a complete idiot. And if he can't, then he should trust my reasoning. I'm a genius.

John groans and shuffles his feet, but there is acceptance already edged in his movements as he prepares a microwaved meal for us both. Runny mushrooms and some other supermarket specialities are on the menu tonight. Still tired, then. Otherwise he'd cook us nutritious food.

There is also something else present in John, something that does not belong in there, likely born out of societal shame conditioning. And that small _something_, lying dormant underneath the layers of his politely rounded civilised personality, bothers me more than rejection itself. It makes me insist that we do give this solution a fair trial run. I need to prove this to John, _something that comes wordless only._

And I take solace in the fact that John has not outright rejected this solution yet.

_**.**_

Sherlock and I spent an awkward day, bumping into each other at Scotland Yard, starting to speak at the same time to fill inhospitable silences, or generally looking lost, not knowing exactly what to do with our hands. Sherlock's violin bow needing more rosin to silken away that grating undertone to the melodies and my typing by pecking the keyboard constantly falling out of rhythm, words escaping me.

From time to time, we got it right. Both our gazes seeking each other's across the room, and the silence that spread between us was nothing but comfortable and full of unspoken connection.

As night falls, we both seem determine to try this out. Hunting a murderer wouldn't feel more natural to the both of us.

It's only logical, in the end. As we both need our rest, and we trust each other's company, that we should join forces this way.

Teeth brushed, my best pyjama on, I shyly knock at Sherlock's door, only to find with devastating surprise the second bed fitted in the bedroom.

'Where had you stashed that?' I point, utterly amused.

He shrugs, just because it's much more fun to make a big secret of it.

'So we're really going to sleep in the same room?' I ask, recapping my life out loud in the hope of making it more believable. 'Like, I'm on a sleepover, and you are actually going to go to bed at a reasonable hour?'

The detective ponders my questions carefully. 'Yes, John.'

I shrug to myself and start releasing my wristwatch chain. He settles on his mattress, pulling the duvet up to his chin, and rolls my way to click off the bedside lamp.

A quiet atmosphere settles in the room.

'Good night, John. I shall initiate my sleeping protocols now.'

'Your _what—? _Oh, never mind. Good night, Sherlock.'

He pays me no more attention.

A grating snore fills the bedroom's darkness.

_Right. Sherlock snores._

_It would have been nice if he had mentioned that._

_Good thing snoring does not bother me much at all._

_**.**_

I'm woken up by frantic commotion in 221B. Someone steps right over my bed, and me in it, to reach the bedroom door, opening it wide and letting too much morning light in.

'What is it now, inspector?' Sherlock huffs, in a sleep groggy voice.

'We cornered the Camden's Heads Collector, Sherlock, in a warehouse by the river. If you come now, you can still make it there just as we nail him.'

It's DI Lestrade.

I get up, tripping on my steps, all left foots and clumsy moves, to go stand at the door and watch Sherlock's well earned moment of recognition and triumph.

'Go, Sherlock. I'll have breakfast ready when you come back', I incentive as soon as he seeks me behind him.

He flashes me a happy grin that the inspector cannot see, and grabs his day clothes to change into, snapping the bedroom door shut after him.

I'm left there smiling benignly in the corridor.

Lestrade shifts his weight from one foot to the other, clears his throat, looks me in the eye and huffs:

'Look, mate, I believe you when you say you two aren't an item, but you _really_ don't make it any easy on us, do you?'

I open my mouth, close it, then try to relay:

'Sherlock's got sleeping protocols and he— hmm— Oh, _shut_ _up_, will you?'

_**.**_


	81. Chapter 81

_A/N: "Duck egg blues". Two parts, I think. -csf_

* * *

_**First.**_

'What can you possibly be doing?' I huff, with a smirk. _Here we go again. _Without even a word or a gesture, Sherlock's got me wrapped around his finger, reeling me into his mad, whimsical world.

The detective is blasé as ever, as he glances towards the kitchen oven, where I just found a few speckled blue eggs nestled on a towel. As if it was the most commonplace occurrence he elucidates me:

'Hatchery, John. It occurred to me your nurturing gifts are going to waste. Ever since my gap year... _years_', he quickly adjusts that one, referring to the time the world believed he was dead, and buried, as if it was an inconsequential delay, 'I am more independent and you have been left feeling somewhat purposeless, my dear John.'

The detective faces me straight on as I'm speechless just as he expected. He picks up the violin, cradles it under his chin and gently caresses those taint strings with the bow, creating a soft melody. Even his words soften as he speaks over the violin. 'I believe this pet project of mine is a brilliant idea to exercise those nagging caring-unto-others needs you experience too often, due to your easy giving in to emotions and feelings.'

'That characterisation of me is plain absurd, Sherlock.'

'But then who will take care of those orphan ducklings?' He just about pouts with sad puppy eyes, lowering his bow. _Wait, was he lullabying the hatching eggs?_ No, can't get distracted. I know when I'm being manipulated...

_But, damn, those ducklings won't fend for themselves. They won't survive without some help._

_I suppose the bathtub will have to do as a pond, then. _No clue on how to teach them to fly, I'm not chucking them out of a window...

_So much for a soak tonight, after work!_

Feeling frustrated, I haul my backpack over my shoulder and grab my NHS identification badge.

'Sherlock', I call out as I pull up a chair by the oven door. 'Your eggs are hatching. You better take the first shift watching them. I'm off to _nurture_ my patients.'

As I expected, he rushes forward with almost comical haste. He doesn't want to miss nature's miracles in action.

And he had the nerve of claiming he was doing this for me. I chuckle quietly under my breath as I get going to work. Don't want to be late.

_**.**_

As I return at the end of the day, I find the kitchen table submerged under books, magazines, print outs and a few odd encyclopaedic volumes opened in specific pages. I half expected that. Even a genius needs to learn how to nurture the younglings of a different species.

I'm not entirely sure Sherlock would know how to change a dipper to his own species either.

What I didn't count on was seeing Sherlock in one of my nicest, warmest jumpers. _Really?_ Pilfered without remorse by a practiced kleptomaniac.

And I just don't have the heart to reproach him as I see him cradling two young ducklings in the warm folds of my sweater.

It's a very endearing picture altogether.

'Sherlock, I—'

'They're orphans, John. Isn't it terrible?'

Reality seems to have hit him hard, and his generally steely grey eyes are rounded and damp. The ascetic genius is a self-induced mess right now. All nurturing and no common sense.

Right. This kitchen seems to be 221B's kitchen, and not an alternative parallel universe. The man standing in front of me seems to be the same dark avenging angel that often looms over the city of London, desperately seeking and picking up on crimes to amuse himself. A man who can dissect a three weeks old rotting corpse on a hot day and stroll outside the morgue for an ice lolly with a smile on his face. Or take up a bloody fight with a criminal gang to stop a drugs lord, before I even get there to be his backup. The man whose name makes hardened criminals think twice about their career prospects is now teary eyed as he protects a duo of croaky ducklings in his arms. Hardly more than fluffy, downy yellow balls with big webbed feet and a jutting beak, flapping tiny wings that wouldn't hold them up if they stumbled on the folds of my sweater, searching for warmth. _Oh, brother..._

'You really missed your calling, mate.'

He looks after me, seriously confused, I'm off to the shower.

Sherlock ducks towards the opened oven door. Inside another little creature must be hatching. He better not have any snake eggs mixed in there or the night might end badly.

_**.**_

Right. Well, then.

_Someone _has filled the bathtub with murky pond water, aquatic plants, and reeds protruding at the surface, and a general "not clean but only just starting to decay organic matter" scent hangs in the warm stuffy air. I notice the small bathroom window is tightly shut, other than that I perceive this corner of our flat's only complete bathroom as a perfect riparian habitat study micro-ecosystem. Trust Sherlock to excel in every available way.

I carefully detour the quagmire-to-be and find my own way to the shower. Good thing we have a shower, and that my flatmate is so considerate as it's been left untouched, deemed of little use to the young orphans.

Sherlock would make a great dad.

I wonder when will the detective introduce the ducklings to the water.

_**.**_

After the first week things reverted to a warped but effective sense of normality. The ducklings are taller, stronger and excel in making their constant racketing noise of contentment. Often during the day they can be seen sprawling around the living room's rug, as I'm not one to keep them confined to the bath room's riparian environment. Sherlock now needs to keep his bedroom door closed because it turns out they chewed an edge of the period table on the wall (I'm not entirely sure how). They also mangled one of his dress shirts, but the detective is not bothered. He probably secretly co-owns a bespoke tailor's store.

Whatever mischief they do, the ducklings usually do it in a pack; like a devilish trio of little misdemeanour trolls.

Of course that, in order to avoid flat sharing animosity, I have been feeding Sherlock the idea that the little rascals abscond the bathroom perimeter on their own, mysteriously so. Sherlock is a mere few hours away from lifting all the floor tiles to figure out their trick. It helps the illusion that the cute feathery yellow and brown creatures with big feet and tiny wings have little bandit lines across their yellow heads and over their eyes.

I don't suppose Sherlock actually believes in the deception, but he bitterly wants to. That's the way to deceive emotionally uptight geniuses like my friend.

Anyway, he's much too busy with this lighthouse case to have much rationality left in him. As it stands, the only possible solution to the mystery would be that someone had carefully dismantled a whole lighthouse, stone, brick and mortar, one piece at a time, and re-erected it forty yards further down the coast line, causing a major maritime accident between a private speedboat and jagged rocks, and releasing to assaulting smugglers a shipwreck load of precious uncut diamonds.

Lestrade asked us for our help, and DI Lestrade got this case, lets face it, because it's the quickest and surest way of getting Sherlock Holmes on board to solve it.

And for all the cases that Sherlock can work on, just fine, independent of my assistance – such as I work for the NHS without the detective – this time I've volunteered to help with the boring background research. Just me, a cup of tea and a heavy volume on the coastal edifications of the last centuries. Well, not just me. The three ducklings have been playfully pecking at the folds of my sweater, searching for food or cleaning their beaks. My jumpers seem to be of magnetic attraction to the little things, as this always happens when I pull one on.

'What?' I growl at a snickering Sherlock, as he crosses the room. _Mind your own business._

'Nothing', he lies.

'Say it', I dare.

'Mother goose comes to mind', he says as he's already moving away.

I'm left glaring after him.

_**.**_

It's at the weekend that it happens. I come home from a long shift, smelling of hospital grade disinfectant and eager to shed the clothes in which I braved a long underground tube journey with, adamant that those ducklings are going to have to learn to share the bathroom as I shower. Like I say, that's when I notice it.

The bathtub mysteriously disappeared from the bathroom. Just gone. An empty space where it once stood, and a permanent discoloration in the floor tiles.

'Sherlock?'

'_Busy, John!'_ is the muffled answer from across the flat.

'Where's the bathtub?'

I'm quite sure there's an empty void space right in front if me at the moment.

'Rooftop, John.' I start at Sherlock's sudden conjuring act, appearing right beside me.

I groan as I realise I'm actually asking: 'Why?'

He shrugs as if it was obvious.

'Better pond, less risk of contracting Legionella disease. And at some point we must teach the ducklings to fledge. Make a note of that on the diary, please.'

Obviously there is no diary, but he wouldn't know, he's got a perfect memory, or so he says.

'Why not get a second bath?' I ask as he's leaving.

'Wouldn't that Mrs Hudson cross? John, you read the tenancy contract, are we allowed a second bathtub?'

'As opposed to the one currently on the roof?'

'Really, John, you are a terribly inconsiderate tenant!'

I decide I'm too tired for this insanity.

_Shower_. I need a very _long_ shower.

_**.**_

I really, really, should have drawn a line. I mean... _Seriously? _I'm all for protecting innocent creatures, but taking the ducklings on a cab ride to Scotland Yard?

Sherlock does not do things by halves.

I'm a little bit proud of his protectiveness. it suits him.

Of course, Sherlock would protect just as easily a venomous snake, or a serial killer, given half the chance. He's not one to make such moral judgments.

The detective alights the cab long before I settle pay with the driver. Something about new mysterious stains on the seat. By the time I make my way inside the building, I don't really know what to expect. I mean... We all know Sherlock Holmes is unconventional, creative, with his own notion of normalcy, but this? I must try to protect my innocent friend from the harsh judgments of the fellow man in society. He does not deserve them. Yet all is life he has been chased for being different. Brilliant I should say. All that is different tends to be misunderstood. And I will not have that. My friend deserves a lot more.

I come out of the lift still looking for Sherlock. I know he's been this way. There was a trail of shed tufted feathers in there. I may not be a world renowned detective but I can get an itch in my nose just like anyone else.

Glancing across the open office full of desks and work stations, my eye is immediately drawn to the water cooler across the floor. _No, it's not possible!_ I sigh, rub my face and zoom in on Donovan and another sergeant who seem to be deep in conversation over a difficult case, and totally oblivious to the duckling perched stop the water cooler's drum.

'Excuse me', I interrupt politely. 'Don't mind me, just getting my duck...' I have to stretch between the two officers to grab the yellow downy ball, that protests with a grating _quack_.

I manage to stuff the duckling in my pocket before anyone notices. All the potential witnesses pay me no attention.

_You're safe, little one._

The two sergeants keep yapping cheerfully about their latest bust.

Now where's the mad genius? I have his lost property.

Zooming in for Lestrade's glass partitions office, I find the overpowering dark haired figure standing – _looming?_ – by the only door, and the older man patiently trying to listen and take notes on the detective's tirades. They are both seemingly negligent to the filing cabinet with the top drawer open, from where two little ducklings are spring boarding inside the drawer, quaking amusedly as they play. I hurry up with a deep groan.

'What the – hell – are you two thinking?' I protest at once, as I barge into the regrettably not soundproof office. I immediately go rescue two more endangered ducklings, right under their watch. I glare at the inspector, he really should know better, and do not mind at all the mess the little ones seemed to be making of the exposed top files. I glare to Sherlock just the same. At least my flatmate has the decency to look chastised. And interrupted in his deductions relaying. I can tell by the frantic sudden loss look in the grey haired inspector, pen poised over notepad.

'John, Sherlock was just telling me about the Lighthouse Smugglers, he—'

Sherlock takes a deep breath, taking in the dark looming energy in his demanding partner. He swiftly scoops the two ducklings, glances at my pocketed duckling, and makes his quick excuses to leave.

'Pressing matters, inspector...'

'But Sherlock!'

'Now, Sherlock!' I demand to the genius, marching first out of the glass office. Several Yarders looking on our way in mild amusement.

'I'll text you from the cab, Lestrade', Sherlock still promises as he keeps pace with me and out of this duck-hazardous, unfriendly place.

_**.**_

_**TBC **_


	82. Chapter 82

_A/N: Three little ducklings, second and last part. -csf_

* * *

_**Second.**_

'John, stop.'

Sherlock reaches out for my arm, as soon as we open 221's front door. I look at my friend questioningly. He is like a reversed magician, capable of seeing things that are not entirely there, things that have mysteriously shifted left two inches or a new scuff mark on a blemished wallpaper.

'John, two intruders', he tells me cryptically, hot of the press as he deduces through our familiar surroundings.

'Clients?'

He shakes his head curtly, bouncing errant curls over his forehead. 'One is a seamen. There's a residue of dry algae on the fifth step's edge, where it meets the wall, _can you not see? _It's too much of a coincidence that our current suspects are sea farers, is it not?'

I can't see another way in which sea algae would make its way into our stairs, so I nod.

'Go check on Mrs Hudson, Sherlock. Give her the little ones. Then come up, I may need a backup', I whisper tightly.

He nods grudgingly. I could swear I still hear him say to me, _"be careful"._

It's my turn to make my way up those seventeen steps. I won't leave our _guests_ waiting.

_**.**_

'Mrs Hudson!'

I'm rushing through the well known cottage feel, doily riddled, modest flat in search of our landlady. White noise rushing in my ears, as I cannot find her. A pot of boiling water on the stove is emitting a steady plume of hot water vapour, the radio is on judging by the increasingly annoying sob story novel being broadcast, but Mrs Hudson is nowhere to be seen as Cathy talks to Gemma about Brian's latest antics at the local pub. With an irrepressible eye roll, I turn off that radio drama.

'What do you think you're doing, young man?'

I turn. Relieved, amused. Mrs Hudson returns with a bunch of freshly cut herbs she grows on the window sill baskets.

'You look dreadful. Sherlock, what is it?'

England is safe. Mrs Hudson is safe, holding up a pair of sheering scissors and a bunch of thyme.

I open my mouth to explain, but before I can there's a loud crashing sound from the ceiling above, making the small hanging lamp sway like a pendulum.

'John...' My lungs deflate like crushed paper bags as the silence is filled with struggle noises – _in the back of my mind I may be finally noticing how much Mrs H can hear from our flat upstairs _– as I know I'm in the wrong place to backup my brave friend.

I hastily transfer those three quivering feather balls to our landlady's safe arms.

'Don't put them in the pan!'

She won't. Just like John, she's melting at the mere sight of the cute little creatures, quacking in frenetic panic as they got separated from their familiar faces.

'Sherlock, we need to talk about you keeping pets up in your flat. Is John okay with these?'

No time for superfluous conversation; John always agrees.

'Lock your doors, Mrs Hudson!'

She wrangles her hands anxiously, despite the feisty load in her arms. 'Dear, what's happening?'

I open my eyes wide to convey in one word only: _'Pirates!'_

_**.**_

I climb those stairs two at a time, desperate to go second John Watson. The fight noises have lessened considerably, ominously so.

I twist my face as I perceive the wrecking of a much abused Moroccan side table, once again being smashed to bits. I don't suspect John likes it much. He's just too polite to come out and say it, instead of finding a way to have it smashed at every opportunity.

Those last, endless wooden steps halt suddenly with a huddled figure on the floor, tied hands and ankles behind his back with a shoulder strap from John's work bag. _Impressive_. The bag itself is flung open on the landing, the contents spread across the floor. Surprised whilst going through John's things, then, with those thin, expert fingers, accustomed to cutting and polishing diamonds. And the second marooned thief?

'_Argh!'_

_John_. The fighting continues behind the closed living room door. Right up against it, as I perceive a slammed body against the wooden barrier. I cross over the first assailant with a wide step and move on blindingly ahead through the kitchen—

I see it, just as John's nails are scratching the exposed floor boards. The doctor is sprawled on the floor, over the crumpled rug, being actively strangled by a calloused, parched skin man with deep wrinkles on his face, a hideous plaid thick shirt, and various scuff marks on his boots.

'_Shrl...'_

Right. Stop deducing the fifty-three year old widower man originally from Cornwall, two manufacturing jobs before turning to a family connection working with a fishing crew, _and save John._

The good doctor's fingernails scratching the unyielding floorboards are turning cyanotic at their beds, oxygen deprivation, failing strengths, serious risk to life – _John's life _– when the smuggler is hit hard by a chair. Caught unaware by not having paid heed to John's mumbling of my name, the assailant stumbles across the floor, finally parting from the doctor. I hit him again and again, keeping him well away from John, teaching him his proper place.

'Shrl—' John croaks, sometime when the chair falls apart and all I'm holding is the back rest. 'Iz alr— Shtop't.'

Luckily for the criminal, I'm fluent in John's gibberish, otherwise I wouldn't quite be done settling the score. I drop the remnants of the chair by the failed fisherman's side and turn back to John.

His face is all red, his neck is bruising at stunning speeds – ordinarily warranting a blog entry, not this time – and he splutters slightly as he breathes ragged breaths. However his deeply bruised eyes are gaining some sincerity and his fingernails are back to healthier pinks. He blinks quickly, as if trying to dissipate dark spots only he can see. I fall on my knees beside him, find myself gently cradling his head, mentally tallying all the broad and micro fractures he may have sustained during the attempted asphyxiation. He pats my hands away, still slightly uncoordinated.

''mm fine', he mumbles, doubling the words' strength with a patented Captain Watson stare.

It's _John_ all over.

'How many fingers am I holding up?'

'The answer is the Atomic Mass Number for Lithium?' he answers through his bruised voice, with a smirk. I wince at the perceived pain carried by that well known voice. _It's all wrong._

'You seem to have got that right, but that would be assuming upon your knowledge of the periodic table.'

'Sherlock, of course I know _some_ of the periodic table. No one knows it all by heart, except you!'

I start helping him up. 'If you care about the periodic table of the elements, why did you let the ducklings try to consume it?' I ask, with a daring squint.

He groans some residual pain left in his throat.

'Where are they?'

'Downstairs at Mrs Hudson's. You don't suppose this little fight was a decent viewing for young impressionable minds like theirs?'

He rolls his perfectly well working eyes, before he assures me: 'You start the deep clean. We don't know where these idiots have been. There's still a ruddy virus out there. I'll call Lestrade and get them collected.'

'Are you sure you are okay enough to talk so much? We can swap, you know?' I still try.

He chuckles throatily.

_**.**_

'We don't have a case, Sherlock, not if we can't figure out _how_ they did it!'

DI Lestrade is at a loss. Having removed the extraneous intruders from 221B, he assures us a case for breaking and entering, with aggravated assault, but little more. No consequence for the shipwreck and stolen diamonds, not until Sherlock Holmes can prove how it was done. Optimistic, I glance over to Sherlock, but he just curtly shakes his head to silently convey to me he hasn't figured it out yet. _Fine, we'll wait._

_I know Sherlock can do it._

And so does Greg, who regrets the wait, but patiently, kindly, does a mock bow to the genius and grabs his coat to leave. Before he does, though, his loyal brown eyes lower on my bruised throat and they darken dangerously.

'Sherlock', he starts, but clips his tongue.

The consulting detective follows his gaze and assures: 'Obviously, inspector. You can tell my brother that I will solve the case... for John, that is.'

'I don't think your brother cares much who for, if it gets solved.'

'And yet, intention is everything', Sherlock admits, dreamily, as he's already reaching for his violin case.

I disguise a warm smile. Couldn't ask for better friends.

As Greg Lestrade is leaving, Mrs Hudson is coming up. As the lockdown restrictions are being eased 221B is again as busy as Piccadilly. I find that I missed that. Particularly because we are now more selective, and keep to closer and more important folks in our lives.

How she manages, I don't know, but our landlady makes her way in followed by a procession of obedient ducklings, returning home. I look upon the endearing picture with a funny feeling.

We really should have named those ducklings. But that would have been to consign them as pets, whereas I'm making sure these younglings will return to the wild and thrive. The day will come for them to fledge and leave the safety and comfort of Baker Street.

Trying to find an alternative topic for my friend to focus his eager mind, I note: 'Tell me about your case, maybe I can help.'

He seems momentarily amused. 'Even though you are my conductor of light, John, I do not expect you to scintillate every time. That would be overworking you.'

'I'll just scintillate intermittently, shall I?'

He blinks at my sarcasm.

I quickly scoop one of the ducklings roaming about on the carpet, pecking at it out of habit. 'Do it for this little one?' I ask. The thing starts packing at my jumper instead, with delighted satisfaction.

Sherlock looks at the downy, feathery duckling with a very critical stance. I recoil, bringing the poor, silently abused duck further into my arms, ready for some off-the-cuff tirade from the cutting detective. Instead what dawns next in the detective's face is wide eyed comprehension, as he sees puzzle pieces fitting together in the familiar forms of Baker Street, ghost images and thoughts that I can never follow, they are my friend's brilliance alone.

'John, you did it', he whispers, his eyes shinning green and mysterious.

'What did I do?' I ask, defensively.

He snaps out of his mental reverie and protests at once. 'Oh, just drop it, John.'

Slowly, carefully, I drop the duckling to the living room rug. Sherlock is absolutely mystified.

'I didn't mean _him'_, he mumbles, bewildered.

'_Her'_, I correct. 'I'm a doctor, I should know better than a detective.'

'Yes, always a success with the ladies, John. Care to join me in the cab ride? I've got a case solution to expound at the end of it, and I work better with an audience.' He grabs his coat and scarf, I'm jumping out of my chair.

_**.**_

I thought we were going to the Yard. Turns out Sherlock meant The Diogenes Club. We arrive just as DI Lestrade gets out of a heavy lines, tinted windows black car, courtesy of Mycroft _Meddling_ Holmes. The poor inspector does not look as shocked as I would expect, and I realise maybe he too gets kidnapped on a regular basis by the British government. Every single important person in Sherlock's life must endure this treatment as a rite of passage.

We are quietly ushered to a private office at the back, all round leather bound volumes on floor to ceiling shelves, like you'd expect at an old fashioned registrar's. The births and deaths in serialized entries covering the walls wrapping around a heavy wooden desk, a few chairs and an austere formal decor, revealing no personality or traits of the occupants.

There's only a small gap of sunlight bringing animation into the sterile room, at the back, and I arrange my position there, facing the others, hands crossed behind my back, at parade's rest.

Sherlock sprawls on a convenient padded chair, Lestrade stands less than comfortably before he gives in, as the younger man glances at him, and takes a stiff sit next to Sherlock.

Mycroft comes in through a communication door, masked in the shelves full of books.

'How good of you to come', he trails polite but emptily. He then glances around the room, as if missing something that was usually there, and his gaze stops as he finds me.

'John...' the lazy upper class voice of Mycroft Holmes meets me just as I had closed my eyes to the nice sunshine boring down on me. 'And how are you today?'

'Same as yesterday', I retort, knowing full well we didn't speak yesterday, but he probably spied on me all the same. 'You're late to your baby brother's lecture. I'd have thought you would highly value your brother's foray into his success solving your case.'

'I thought I'd skip the "Science of Deduction" introduction. My brother can be so dramatic...'

I smirk, still more concerned about that lovely warm sunshine than Mycroft's antics. I can see right through Mycroft's annoyed, put off face.

Sherlock quips in: 'Perhaps John should explain it.'

I open my eyes straight at my friend and squint.

Sherlock smirks and gets up, puffing his chest, here it comes.

'John, how can you provide me with the solution and still not see it?' His tone is cold and scanty, but his actions are anything but, as he comes to my side, to lean against the same set of bookshelves and observe the room by my side. His relaying, when it comes, it aimed only at me, as if only I mattered in his case solving glory. 'Imagine it, John, if you will. A system of parabolic mirrors. Like Archimedes built to burn down ships in Syracuse. Only here the mirrors were used to shift the emitting light to a different location, spelling disaster on the coast by their presence in the wrong place. Less burning, the same destructive power. Just like old smugglers did, lighting bonfires to deceive unhappy sailors, before feasting upon the shipwrecks.'

'Smugglers?' I ask conversationally, following Sherlock's plan of ignoring the room.

'And pirates. Modern, clever, near effortless pirates. Condensing the beam of light from the nearly a occulted light fixture at the top of the lighthouse and reflecting it on the solar panels at a nearby house – I believe well find it was a very suspicious quick refurbishment of a seaside home, given the panels were fitted at a northern exposure; oh, how could I have not seen it before? – and from there to a the big concave mirror inside a white van with the door slid open and parked at the nearby – forty yards-at the most – promontory, that shone it back to the sea, taking the lighthouse's place! Frailer, having lost some intensity, but the speedboat crew was not expecting deceit, and they followed the promise of safe conduit in the perilous waters that the coast had to offer.'

'But the original lighthouse beam? Wouldn't there be two lights shining on the coast?'

'Not if the same men who redirected the original lighthouse light used their trick to occult it on the sea side. All they needed were a few reflecting foil blankets from a bigger first aid kit, fitted to the glass panes with ease. You can buy those anywhere. Easily removed at the end of the enterprise.'

'And no one saw that?'

'It was done on the sea facing side, on a coast that serves embarkations fitted with modern navigational systems, that operate further from the jagged coast line than a millionaire's speedboat. Plundering the wrecked boat was easy, Lestrade already has those details. The question was how did they attract the speedboat, John, and you've got it...' he whispers, looking deferentially at me as if I actually done any thing. 'Of course the speed boat would have their own navigational system, but it got jammed by a low frequency signal emitted by the modern pirates. Lestrade should go question that first seaman who attacked you, John, he clearly put it all together. Perhaps Lestrade should hurry as the seaman will likely try to escape to international waters by 16:17's high tide, if he's set free on bail, after which he cannot be arrested or prosecuted, and from where he intends to set up a floating popup store of stolen diamonds.'

Lestrade doesn't even complain, as he grabs his coast and, with a curt thank-you nod, leaves the office to hurry back to the Yard.

I hope Mycroft's car is waiting to take him back.

Mycroft is silent, leaning back on his swivel chair, behind the desk, pondering his baby brother with a curled lip.

'You may go', he dismisses us, with prejudice.

Sherlock smiles brightly at his win.

_**.**_

It's been a few weeks, and the detective is acting a bit strange; even for _Sherlock standards._ Normally I would worry that he had managed to poison himself, or was in some other way acting under the dark influence of some pervasive criminal (my friend will take his cues from just about anyone, their morality notwithstanding), but this time I have very good suspicion I know what is on his mind. My friend has come a very long and tortuous way in his association with Scotland Yard. He may have started as the odd consultant, easily dismissed by the likes of the early Anderson and Donovan team, brought into the scene by a clever Detective Inspector that saw the spark of brilliance in the rudderless younger man, but through years of active partnership Sherlock has really come very far. Sherlock Holmes is, just like he dreamt and fought so hard to be, an authority in his own field. He made a name for himself. His opinion bears absolute relevance among the specialists in the forensic field. Although the trademark social awkwardness remains, and his etiquette handling corpses at crime scenes has immense room for improvement, it is very rare now that Sherlock is not taken seriously. When he starts speaking, the investigators stop to listen. They know they are in for a treat, an opportunity at a lesson of a lifetime. And they learn. With fraying patience – but full acceptance. And that is exactly the new reality that Sherlock is ready to face.

My great friend and incredible forensic genius, has been invited to guest lecture in one of London's top universities. He nearly rejected it, of course. I almost didn't know. When I found out, I insisted hat Sherlock should take this opportunity to prove to himself and the world that he has come indeed so far.

Sherlock may have accepted the honour only because I insisted. He did ask the University that it could be a more practical lesson that he would take up as a guest lecturer. An autopsy, he suggested. A toxicology analysis in the lab, perhaps. Lord forbid he would be tempted to deduce every single student and staff member in the audience. Or, knowing Sherlock, noting he invited me along to witness his success, that my friend the genius would feel tempted to poison the whole amphitheatre full of students to practically explain the differences between the different toxins he used, whilst I struggled to save each and every life. Sometimes I'm thoroughly sure that Sherlock trust my ability since his doctor too much.

The ducklings are a distraction. And Sherlock has his own Ugly Duckling story to finish. And I for one, am very proud to be there to witness the arch.

And so will be a fatherly Lestrade, and somewhere in a dark corner of the room a little discreet camera will feed the class to Big Brother.

Sherlock once told me that the frailty of genius was its need of an audience. I beg to differ. The frailty of genius is just that, its vulnerability in exposing itself as something apart from the rest of us.

At the end of the day, Sherlock has had quite a few bad experiences. Before and after I came along. As much as my innocent friend deserves so much better from this hard world that judges harshly those that are different from the norm, it is time for me to step back and watch his brilliant light shine forth autonomously.

I can't wait for Sherlock's next guest lecture already. I just hope he doesn't try to tell the administration that a whole wing should be named after him, or that he singlehandedly could provide a whole forensics study course. _Oh, he could._ Can one imagine a whole class of students graduating from University sounding and acting just like Sherlock, invading the newest crime scenes? Perhaps the world is not yet ready for that.

_**.**_

Today is the day of Sherlock's lecture, and we're standing at the open rooftop area atop 221 Baker Street. Among the scape of urban roofs, steeples and high rise buildings in the distance, along with building cranes and the far away mist of greenery, there is a small area that is our alone, a secluded space set apart in the busy city.

I can't begin to explain how we managed to persuade three young ducks to climb the stairs, but they followed us with that single mindedness of blind trust. They look older now, one all shades of brown – the only female – and the other two with their green heads, yellow collar and stripped wings – two very proud mallard ducks, no mistake to be had.

'We should have prepared a little goodbye speech', I notice.

'Why?' he challenges at once. 'We have been coming up here every day, willing them to fledge away. They may never really do.'

I frown. 'Yeah, but, you know, what if they do? It's their nature.'

'We'll see them around, John. Now we must let them find their way.'

I nod, still feeling oddly emotional.

'Where did you get the eggs in the first place? You didn't steal them, did you?' I pierce the crazy scientist with a close watch.

'Most certainly not', he tells me, full of dignity, only to then add: 'I didn't have to.'

I turn to Sherlock full of protests when I'm cut off by a magnificent creature opening its wings and taking flight. It's a spectacle to behold. Just as the first duckling proves she's all grown up, and obeys that deep set instinct inside her, the two others take that lead and fledge from their home, the only home they have properly known. I quickly brush away a tear in my eye.

_I'll miss them._

'Sherlock', I start, as their blurry shapes become the more indistinct in the direction of the nearest green park – they'll be happy to set up a life there. 'Sherlock, how are we getting that bathtub back downstairs?'

He opens and closes his mouth, then adopts his "that's a good challenge" demeanour.

Sometimes I wish Sherlock would think things through.

'Come on, _professor Holmes, _we'll be getting late for your lecture...'

_**.**_


	83. Chapter 83

_A/N: If you ask me if there's a plan, yes, there's always a plan. A very abstract, flexible plan, but nonetheless a plan. We'll see where this goes, huh? __Part one__ of more. -csf_

* * *

_**I.**_

Sherlock's recent exploit into the academic medium as a guest lecturer opened unsuspected new doors to my friend's very specific chosen field of work. From night to day, he became the targeted focus of forensic queries from all new areas. No longer solely desperate client's pen pals, Lestrade's helpers and Scotland Yard's little secret, Sherlock was flooded with fresh new interest from other forensic connoisseurs.

Resurrected were the blog entries on ash, foot and tyre prints, fibres and toxins. In fact, the consulting detective was a bit annoyed all these experts had not read his numerous monographs before, some of which published online for over ten years now. At first he responded to the contact requests with lengthy lectures, later with embedded links, finally with useless shouting at the laptop screen – that up until I pushed down the laptop lid and forced Sherlock to step away from the onslaught of queries and requests for help.

'I need to create an apprenticeship programme', he finally said, his jittery fingers still quivering slightly as he accepted a warm cup of tea. _It's the shock talking._

I take a seat across the room, at the sofa, and urge him:

'Like a detective firm? Baker Street's Detective Agency?' I ponder, wonder what I'd look like in a trench cost and fedora hat.

Just about as ridiculous as a deerstalker.

Sherlock can pull anything off, though.

My friend shifts on my armchair to face me full on.

'What else am I supposed to do? There are people wanting _to learn to be me!'_

I study the sharp angles on my friend's face, twisted in incredulity. Despite a high notion of self-worth, the idea that regular folks would want to emulate him is incomprehensible to the genius.

'Don't worry too much. You're one of a kind, Sherlock.'

He squints and leans forward.

'I can spread the rumour that it's actually you the clever one.'

I smirk, not taking prejudice at all.

'Nah, you're the one with sharp cheekbones and feline eyes.'

'Can they not see your run-of-the-mill look is far more productive in creating and sustaining disguises while pursuing suspects?'

'Less heroic, though', I remind the detective as I get up to take my mug to the sink.

Sherlock just won't let go. 'You're a medalled army hero.'

I'm losing my patience so I carefully reply: 'True, but I can't solve as many crime scenes.'

'I could feed you the answers through a concealed earbud, or electric impulses from a microchip under your skin.'

I give him a long sideways look. 'I'll pass, thanks.'

Sherlock huffs and falls back on my armchair, making the springs bounce him jerkily. He looks uncomfortable long after this springs settle. I try to find a way to ease his discomfort.

'I thought you liked the attention' – is what I end up saying instead.

He looks at me thoughtfully, watching me return to the living room, and having to take his leather chair in order to sit closer to him.

'I'm flattered', he admits trying his mightiest to keep a straight face. 'But I do not wish to be consulted in each inane problem some halfwit investigator finds in his way to a meagre salary. I want to good cases, John! The juicy murders, the impossible locked room mysteries, the death defying tricks! I did not become a consulting detective to get asked on haemoglobin irregularities or genetic illnesses of a specific chromosome.'

'Wow, you were asked on genetics?'

He looks away. 'Not really, more like the difference in textures in shed dog hairs by species and age of the canine, and something or other about radioactive meteoric dust – but that one turned out to be a fluke, because they wanted another professor Holmes, at the Royal Astronomical Society.'

'I'm sure you gave them your opinion on radioactive star dust regardless.'

'Maybe', he admits, looking so far off now as to study the empty fireplace grate. 'But John', he turns to me so quickly he startles me, 'I don't want to become an old academic specialist in forensic science that sits in his office and collect reports from enslaved undergraduates on short-term bursaries! Who would help Lestrade chase criminals across London?'

Good question. And although these days my shoulder silently aches in the background every other day, I too don't want to give up our enjoyment for a stuffy life in an university or museum's research department.

'Right. Well, you don't have to make major life decisions just yet', I end up saying, getting up after patting his knee affectionately. 'And whatever you choose, I'm supportive.'

'But you won't legally change your name to Sherlock Holmes and dye your hair black', he still tries.

'Black? There are more than a few silvery strands on that mop of curls of yours, Sherlock.'

Like I expected, he dashes to the bathroom mirror to check his hair and see if it's true. That should keep him distracted for the rest of the day. Good to see my friend keeps his priorities in check.

_**.**_

I struggle momentarily to open the corroded window frame, whilst Sherlock watches me, amused.

'There are no plants to water, John', he alludes to the narrow balcony space and railing overhanging the street sidewalk below. It's a narrow, unused space that leans over the sidewalk.

Sherlock is still studying me. 'Ha! You have arranged for something to happen. What a little break from the monotony! Are you planning on surprising me? I sure hope you are. I should like a surprise.'

I glance, most confused, back at my flatmate, when a projectile flies through the window, hitting me squarely in the face, then plopping down in the floor. 'Ah, dammit!' I massage a sore cheek with grudge as I lean back out of the window. 'Cheers, Harry!'

Behind me, Sherlock drops all pretence of disinterest and rushes to catch a glimpse of Harry as she walks away – the Watsons are not lengthy talkers – but he too fumbles with the window lock, and by the time he succeeds in opening the other window she is but a dark speck far away at the end of the street turning the corner.

'Your sister? Why is she so rude? Why does she not visit you?' He squints squarely in my face, towering over me for a simple power play, trying to read my innermost thoughts. _That's where he believes my family relationships will lie; concealed in the expression lines of my face, huh?_

I chuckle through a smirk, but leave it at that. Sherlock obliges to pick up the bunch of metal keys off the floor and raise them up between us. He tries to study them attentively. I wonder what even a detective like him can make out of a nondescript bunch of keys, or my intentions through them. I give him time to analyse it all, to go ballistic whilst trying to predict my intentions, to wow me by relaying back things I have not yet explained.

'Your cheek is bleeding', he tells me gently with a tentative raise of fingertips. I raise my hand first and feel that hot stinking area.

'Sisterly love', I claim easily.

He smirks. 'You didn't tell me she was such a good shot, John.'

Gently he leads me back to the sofa and has me sitting down while he fetches my first aid kit.

'Don't move, John.'

_**.**_

John Watson is a gentle giant; despite his short stature, that is. He sits with his back ramrod straight on the sofa, as if he disagreed with very nature of the piece of furniture. No peep or protest does he make while I'm away. And by the time I arrive the only thing that has moved is a soft touch thumb rolling over the cut metal pieces of keys. I wonder what they mean, what he intends to do. He knows he can effectively drive me crazy by not telling me the secret he holds. _Fascinating_. He surprises me yet again.

I return quietly to John, taking a seat on the coffee table in order to face him straight on. He takes the first aid kit from my hands with dextrous moves, so I'm left holding a small mirror so we can see while disinfecting and covering that wound.

'Hold it up like _that._ Oh, and – ugh – take a look at the van keys.'

I do just that, strung along by invisible threads of curiosity.

'As a crime been committed?' I start, twenty questions style.

He succeeds in frowning and opening his eyes wide. 'Gosh, I hope not.' John's eyes are a deep set of ocean blue today, flaked with sandy browns, as if he carried echoes of the desert with him forever. _Perhaps he does._

'Too bad. Maybe a nice murder next time?'

'Not in my sister's van', he maintains, adamant. _Spoilsport_. 'She wouldn't be pleased. She's lending it to us, Sherlock. We're going on the road.' He smiles, that rare wide grin that is _John's _alone, that could sway armies and win wars without a battle.

'Going where?' I still protest, true to form. But his satisfaction is contagious, willing me to give it a try.

_Famous last words_, a more recalcitrant part of my brain supplies wisely.

'It's a road trip. It's not about the destination, but the journey', he insists.

I blink when faced with his gratuitous platitudes.

'Do you mean we are consuming fossil fuels for no reason whatsoever?'

'Yes and no, _Greta_. You are, of course, right, but there is a reason, I'm just not explaining it to you. It's easier if I show you how a road trip works, Sherlock. It can do you wonders when you are searching for a decision over a life path.'

All micro traits of honesty are presently displayed in his features. He believes what he says.

'How does that even work?' I openly scrunch my face in distaste.

He seems taken back, but recovers quickly.

'Through the power of metaphors?' he shrugs, blasé.

'And who's Greta?'

'I'll explain when we come back, Sherlock', he answers me defiantly, pushing away the mirror and first aid kit.

He knows he's got me curious now. Only John plays me this well. _Not even Jim Moriarty had better access than my best friend._

_**.**_

'There's still a global pandemic alert, Sherlock, and technically this is anything but essential travelling; thank goodness we're done with that restriction for now...'

John keeps muttering away as we walk the crowded streets of London. Some people have face coverings over half their visages, other refuse to do so over fears of a governmental conspiracy, that, like all others, uses indiscreet technical capabilities to spy on individual citizens and find them in crowds. If only they realised that covering half their faces with fabric was a better way of avoiding identification, or noticed Mycroft's spoofs pick on patterns of behaviour as much as face markers to find their targets, perhaps then everyone would better protect themselves and we could actually get rid of this virus instead of just riding the early exponential infections before learning to co-inhabit the world.

John drags me along to a nearby parking lot. A grimy, open air, fenced tarmac area, where he quickly zooms in on a decrepit looking blue van. I'm too overdressed for this, I notice as I glance at John's customary oatmeal sweater. John still dresses warmly to this day, even as temperatures are gentle at this time of year. More than the hideous sweater, it's John's demeanour that attracts my attention. His movements are loose, his chin is held up but there are little signs of tension in his marked jawline. His features have softened by the prospect of this silly metaphor-powered exercise.

'Well, what do you think?' he asks me, hung up on my reactions.

'Intriguing.'

'You're not even looking at the van!'

I blink. _He's caught me. _Wait, what of it if I'm studying John? _I always do that._

'You're not driving. You are a terrible driver.' I wait with a palm open between us.

He huffs but gives in quickly. 'We can swap when you get tired.'

_Tired of living?_ I shudder to think of John's driving.

I must be malfunctioning in my hard drive, I notice, as I open the van door to a musty old seats and sun overheated plastic fittings.

'Get in, John. The open road awaits us.'

_**.**_

_**TBC **_


	84. Chapter 84

_A/N: Delayed yet again, sorry. Meanwhile, Sherlock and John were going on a road trip. -csf_

* * *

_**II.**_

'What was that?' I ask quickly, glancing over my shoulder as if the answer could be lying in the tarmac road behind us. The van comes to a brisk halt, still marked by that thumping, lopsided rhythm, pounding.

John is rolling his eyes at me, as if I had just missed something easy.

'Flat tyre, genius. Got _"__how to change a tyre"_ somewhere up in your hardware noggin?'

He chuckles at the expression he picks off my face, but there's no malice there. The soldier is already getting off his seat. I think he's planning to change the tyre. Good. Maybe I can help. Where's the van's instructions manual? One can't be too careful on the road...

John's high pitched voice complains from somewhere outside the van. 'Not giving me a hand, then? Content to just scavenge through my sister's glove compartment, then?'

There's exasperation and defiance, short-temper and fondness in my friend's soothingly familiar voice.

'I'll be right out, just looking for something!'

He grunts in disbelief; or it could be the effort he's putting behind unscrewing those contraptions to release the tyre.

If only I could find the instructions manual I'd might find out what they're called and how to best tackle them efficiently.

'Any time now, Sherlock...'

'Hmm hmm.'

He huffs, indignant for some reason, but keeps to his diligent work.

I glance at him through my rear-view mirror. All strong muscles pumped under the stretched fabric of a frankly ugly plaid shirt. Strong crisscross pattern lines contrasting with lean protruding muscles. He's a natural.

'Hmm. You're doing a fine job, John!'

He releases an eloquent string of expletives an insecure detective would have thought directed at him, but I can tell it's the tyre, giving him a spot of trouble.

I'm having no luck finding written protocols, but I find an old Polaroid picture on the driver's door pocket, a lost treasure from the past. I recognise the red eyed, too exposed by the camera's flash, form in front_. John. _A younger looking John, seemingly carefree and bearing his "mischief in progress" smirk. I store that picture carefully away in my wallet's deepest recesses. _Finders keepers_. 'John, how long on that tyre?' I below over my shoulder with a theatrical sigh.

_**.**_

'How did you manage to pierce two tyres?' John asks me, aggravated. We're only a few hundred yards further down, stopped at the curb, as we restarted and soon heard the same paced clunking sound.

'How's it my fault your sister's old van is falling apart?' I retort, brusquely.

'It was fine before you started driving it, Sherlock.'

'Oh no, this isn't once again about who drives and who co-pilots, is it? Because I already told you, John, your role is paramount in this enterprise—'

'There's sat nav in the van', he clips, curtly.

'Didn't stop me from driving over the left over shards of metal debris on the road, did it?'

'How did you expect me to see that coming?'

'It's alright, John', I concede. 'Just get the second spare tyre on and let's get going. We must be late for Nowhere by now.' I glare at the short soldier and cross my arms in front of me, effectively mirroring his stance.

Except he opens his blue eyes wide. 'There's no second spare tyre, Sherlock', he hisses through gritted teeth. _As if I would know that. It's very remiss of Harry Watson._

When he sees nothing but blank confusion in my face, John sighs and relents. 'Right. Night's falling soon and it's getting chilly. No sight of civilization around and no cars in these back roads either. Fat chance we'll get passers-by's help. There's still very little traffic on the roads. I say it's safer to stick with the van for the night and go look for a mechanic in the morning.'

I finally have a better look around at the landscaping encroaching on us. Dark evergreen trees looming on the other side of the road, like marching soldiers in a rank. Spiky shrubs and dishevelled tufts of chlorophylled stunted entities on the other side. Birds chirping away as the nightfall lifts clouds of insects hovering on the cooler stale air layers above the hot ground.

John is already opening the back doors to the compact van. In true Watson style, Harry's wheeled treasure trove does not disappoint. There's a blanket, tinned food, water bottles (plastic, what about the environment?), several empty alcohol bottles – John looks all sheepish at that, but he is not to blame for his sister's sins – even a small camping gas container. We might be alright yet, thanks to the Watson's indulgent need to worry about all possible contingency scenarios...

'Here', John hands me a clutch of fabric without even looking at me. _He's upset with me, then._ Or more worried than he wants to let on. I unfold the ungrateful garment. A light grey _hoodie_, I believe it's called.

'I'm not wearing this', I hand it back, he won't take it. 'It's hideous and unfashionable, John! No, I insist there must be civilization nearby. We can ask for help from a kind innkeeper or knock at the presbytery door and find shelter for the night.'

'Should we follow the North Star?'

John sniggers openly as he unpacks a fleece blanket. It smells musky as if it had been stored damp. I roll my eyes at the conjured image of Harry Watson. She clearly did not inherit the same neatness gene as her brother.

_Must ask her for thoughts on how to survive living with John._

The former soldier – too quick to adjust to adverse circumstances and to thrive in them,_ I can only respect that _– faces me at last.

'I think you're right Sherlock, we should have a nosey at the area. By the way, no phone signal on yours either, is there?'

I follow John's gaze to my pocket, and shake my head minutely. Of course he'd check.

'Let's go, then, before night falls and we are in a B listed horror movie, being hunted down by a serial killer on the lose.'

I smile openly. _Ooh, John knows exactly how to cheer me up. The evening can still get better._

_**.**_

There's a little stream, not a minute away from the van parked by the side of the road by consecutive mishaps. I won't bother John with statistics on heavy metals pollutant runoffs from the traffic above, as the doctor seems pleased to find the crystal clear flow. He bends down gracefully to wash the tannin stains off his calloused hands on the cool water, just as the sun settles behind a line of artificially planted hedgerow hilltop cypresses, at a distance. Only murky green hilly countryside landscape after that. The stream, and hedges filled with wild blackberries that flank towards it in a respectful bow, are the bigger disturbances on monotone agricultural fields left to rest under hay covers in August. I should suspect there's a farmers house nearby, but John insists it may be far away yet, and that there's no guarantee anyone is staying at the farm at this time. He's probably right and I've long abandoned the wishful hope of sleeping in a comfortable bed tonight. I've got a protective roof in the van's back, and I feel safe by the knowledgeable soldier's side. He's been trained to survive in the wild, and I've trained myself to capture serial killers that stalk the wilderness of agricultural fields at night._ We make a good team._

'This puts your road trip on hold, John', I comment.

He smiles softly my way. 'Not at all. This is already part of our trip. It was bound to have some mishaps along the way. The best ones always seemed to.'

Intrigued, I watch as he gets up and dries his hands to the wash-worn fabric of his jeans. 'Let's head back.' I nod.

_**.**_

There are gaudy fairy lights hanging above our heads, _damn Harry Watson. _On the back of the van John has laid out the blanket, and over it he displayed proudly our meagre supply of food. Tinned beans for dinner, berries for dessert. I've got hold of an old notebook and pen, while John went out to brew some coffee in enamel crockery. I find that I'm enjoying the quiet atmosphere of the countryside, as I plump that hoodie as a makeshift cushion behind my back, my legs stretched out and my feet dangling off the van.

An insect buzzes by and I watch it raptly until it flies away.

John returns with two cups of fragrant coffee from the gas stove, and quickly follows my gaze onto the dark night.

'Peaceful, huh?'

I observe the now still forms of trees and shrubs outside, flat against the dark background of night. Finally a perceive the softest hint of swaying movement of branches, and a twitch at a distance as an owl takes flight chasing prey – the dark sterile landscape coming alive like no urban scape can really do with the same gentleness. John clicks off the lights for a moment. My eyes grow accustomed to the night and the stars suspended above us seem impossibly brighter. Quieter. Whispering the secrets of the universe straight at us.

'John, I approve of your flat tyres' location.'

He chuckles and clicks the dim lights back on. 'Drink your coffee while it's hot, it's bound to get a bit chilly tonight. And anyway, what have you been up to?'

I smile proudly at him.

'Periodic Table Elements Scrabble. Want to have a go?'

He chuckles. Amused, calm, relaxed.

That same tranquillity permeating John Watson. Perhaps he too needed the road trip to cleanse the bitter taste of routine. I like seeing my old friend without that tense energy and dark demons fuelled self-deprecation. This freedom suits him. It allures and intoxicates him with life.

'Let's play then, Sherlock. English only. Or at least no languages I don't speak.'

I smirk. He likes to make it tougher on me.

_**.**_

'People want to recognise you as an expert in your field. I thought you'd be happy, Sherlock.'

I turn my head to John, lying on the back of a broken van, sharing a blanket with me. He looks eager while gentle, trying not to overcrowd me. I can see it pleases him, me taking this occupation of expertise full time, there's a sense of pride emanating from his trust in me.

'I can appreciate the recognition', I venture. John's expression is surely making my heart lighter. I could almost see it. The steady inflow of cases on my inbox, free access to more labs, and Molly would still grant me access to her resources at the morgue. Then, _what?_

'I don't want to be like Mycroft', I say, in a soft sigh. John's brows crinkle, and I remind him: 'High and mighty on the mind work front, but what would _you_ do?'

He looks the more puzzled. _Oh, John._

'I don't get it', he admits.

I growl inwards and look away to the stars in the sky. 'University professors and world experts are not expected to do much legwork, chasing criminals and finding leads. I suppose you'll say I should retire the field and give way to the newbies, John.'

'Like hell I will', John snaps at once, loyally. He shuffles on the hard surface before turning sideways, towards me. 'Sherlock, you were never a textbook consulting detective. It's fair to say you create your own rules. Who would stop you from doing the same now?'

I glance at him, intrigued. I still don't think he's seen the whole picture. I'd have to decamp most of Baker Street onto campus. I'd see John way less, being away. The way we have it now, doctor John works weird schedules and usually finds me home upon his return. How would John cope with returning more and more from gruelling long hospital shifts to an empty flat?'

How would I feel at home in a stuffy campus office without John? Unless he wants to be my assistant? He would do it if I asked, but he'd get terribly bored. I'm not the only one prone to boredom. I may have to stretch out onto murder and kidnap of colleagues and students to provide him with necessary distractions quota. John wouldn't be too pleased if he ever found out. Nor the directors board, but I don't really care about them. I could make them top of the hit list...

'Sherlock, are you getting lost in that big brain of yours?' John gently snaps me back. I nod, frankly. He rounds his eyes in deep understanding. 'No need for snap decisions. We're on the road, Sherlock. You don't have to decide while we're on the road.'

He says that as if it's a universally accepted rule.

'Is there comfort in adjourning a big decision, John?'

He huffs. 'Probably not. But sometimes there's a bit of relief in holding onto the status quo before possible big change. Just remember', he adds turning again, 'I'm supportive, whichever way you decide. Just don't stay awake all night plotting University campus murders, Sherlock. It's not nice, and I suppose you'd be terribly busy as staff.'

I turn away too, mechanically. My heart lurching at that word; _staff?_

Is this what Mycroft feels like everyday? I start to understand his need for a petty streak.

Rolling tighter into the blanket I try to will my mind cogs to stop and initiate sleep protocol.

'Goodnight, Sherlock. And stop hogging the blanket.'

'Goodnight, John.'

_**.**_

Sherlock paces back up the slight hill energetically. The morning is still brisk cold, but with that stale heavy atmosphere clinging to the ground, typical of days that are about to heat up drastically.

I hand Sherlock fresh coffee – shame, no tea, _Harry was clearly adopted _– as soon as he passes me the camping cups.

'I could spot a construction over two miles over the fields, John. We could go explore... unless you prefer the sterile academic investigation from afar', he adds.

Don't know why he thinks I'm trying to push him to take the job. I'm trying hard not to press him into any of the two possible decisions. Keep his options open until he has fully considered them. Sherlock, for all his impulsive moods and snap decisions, has a tendency to a certain comfort zone. He found Home at Baker Street, and loves his Work as it was, before the pandemic hit. Slowly he regained some perks with the Yard, yet all seems drastic and irreparably changed now.

If there's a second lockdown and Sherlock's Work dries up again, I'm not entirely sure he can take it again.

Maybe it's time for a more stable job, a respectful, leadership role over the newer generations.

Or are we making decisions too close to a difficult event, still tainted by the after-effects of uncertainty and constrained liberties?

I glance again at my friend. In the quiet morning light he looks more rested. _He always sleeps better with me._ His curls are artistically disarrayed, his eyes are clear and reflecting some of the greenery at the landscape around us, his broad shoulders powering through Harry's misshaped dull hoodie. The lines oh his jaw are still a bit tense as he looks up towards the hills, back straight over relaxed hips, and the coffee cup is poised on long fingertips, a classy image right out of a man's clothes catalogue. Even the rugged smudge of facial hair suits in this morning. He looks well. Sherlock's looks _here_, _now_.

Then he turns with an amused smirk. He knows I've been watching him. He allowed it. He now collects in my face result of my observation, just like using a mirror to his own mind.

I finish lacing my boots, roll my shoulders in anticipation of a long wall, bang shut the van doors and pocket the keys.

'Lead the way, mate.'

'Is this still part of a road trip, John?'

'If you want to, yeah.'

'Even if we technically leave the marked road behind and go across the fields?'

I grin. 'Still being technical? You can't find Scrabble words with the Zinc tile, Sherlock, no matter how much you mumbled the word "zinc" it still has an "I" in there. We agreed on the English language, Sherlock, and no other.'

He huffs. 'If I ever become a boring academic I shall compile a Science Language Scrabble dictionary, John. I shall send you an autographed copy once it's out on print.'

'You do that, Sherlock, you do that.'

_**.**_

_**TBC **_


	85. Chapter 85

_A/N: All in John's point of view, funnily enough. Should be less confusing. -csf_

* * *

_**III.**_

It feels comfortable, trekking the English rural landscape with Sherlock. I always find it curious that the detective who swings at vertiginous speed between workaholic hyper mania and bouts of languid idleness, never seemingly aware of a middle ground, can suddenly seem so in tune with the rhythms of nature. He once said he'd like to retire one day to the countryside. I thought he was joking, I really did, as Sherlock seems in perfect harmony with the high pace, frenetic bouts of London. But when I see Sherlock following the dirt beat track by another drywall partition among quartered agricultural fields, I start developing this new theory over my surprising friend, where I really think he absorbs energy from his surroundings and blends in with ease. Perhaps Sherlock could do with a little cottage somewhere, in his old age. However, I won't ever assume he'll want to retire. His much too in love with his work.

I join my hands behind my back, keeping up with Sherlock's long legged pace easily. I try to follow his gaze, and decipher what he's thinking._ No, all I see are patches of green, beige, green, blue, dark green, light green, grey, and green again._

_I really don't know how Sherlock does his county fair's mind reading trick. I sure can't pull it off on him, he's too inscrutable, too unpredictable._

Just like that, without a twitch on his face or hitch in his breath, Sherlock must have read my mind, for he unmutes himself mid-thought, for my benefit alone:

'—not hard, Mycroft could arrange it all, I'm sure. He'd complain, Mycroft always complains, but he has an innate need to be the big brother, he'd secretly enjoy arranging all those tedious details. Can't be all that hard to transport the whole of 221B Baker Street – Mrs H included – to a secluded corner of the university campus. Nothing would really change all that much. John could give up his folly dream of healing all humanity one patient at a time, and become an enrolled student, present at my lectures. Wait, no, I need an assistant. Could take in a new assistant, but John is very well trained now, if I may say so myself. I guess John could be a student _and_ an assistant, given he's halfway through the Science of Deduction training as it is, and that is unfair advantage upon the students. Cannot possibly show favouritism like that, except that with the extra of assisting, John would have far less time to study the curricula. Ah, but John is clever, he can keep up with the emerging teacher's pets. He's also possessive with me, so he'd naturally want to outshine the contenders, this could be stimulating to watch, of course. And I mustn't forget—'

'_Here'_ – I interrupt him, handing the teacher a wild apple growing from a gnarly tree by the path. I rather think I'll mute Sherlock again for the time being. His breakneck, deduction-speed, spiralling inner thoughts are making me all tired again.

I wonder how this intelligent man doesn't overthink himself till he keels over.

Looking back, I think I've seen him do that before. I guess that's got to be a natural curse of someone with a big brain, to overthink everything.

Great, now _I'm_ overthinking things. Does that mean I'm also quite intelligent or is it just contagious, like when you see someone yawning?

'The latter', Sherlock runs through half chewed apple.

I chuckle. He's just guessing, he likes to keep me perplexed as to his mind reading abilities. No better way of keeping them highly unbelievable than throwing in a few random guesses, generic enough so that they're one-size-fits-all.

Sherlock reaches for an old fashioned traditional gate and holds it open for me as I go past. He carefully latches it closed after us, I'm already eyeing benignly the peaceful cattle that grazes parched grass at a distance. Big, strong creatures with doey eyes and a peaceful temperament.

It really doesn't look at all like we are heading towards a city, or at least a village, but it's Sherlock's road trip, he can choose whatever path he wants.

Our footsteps crackle over the dried grass that covers the land, as Sherlock makes a beeline straight to a darker foray of trees at the edge of the field. There's a bit of an elevation, soon getting steeper as we march our way through the warming morning. Beyond the trees, we start to discern a rockier ground, uneven and untamed, lightly sprinkled with natural heather, just starting to bloom, to transform the dull greenery into fiery purples.

Sherlock halts suddenly, picking up something off the ground. Possibly some dead moth or the residual excrement of a colourful beetle; he'll do that. He'll give the natural world as much forensic attention as he gives the crime scenes, his need to find and solve puzzles everywhere the connecting thread between the uncommon hobbies. He sometimes even collects his findings in bagged and tagged evidence packets he "borrowed" from the Yard. He really finds comfort in solving, ordering, cataloguing and organising the past events of the worlds he crosses. Sherlock is a funny character. No barren landscape is ever boring to him. He sees the stories they carry, and I tell them.

'John, you should take a look at this', he requests, all solemn and grave all of a sudden. I lean closer at once.

'Not what I expected to see', I mutter.

'Indeed', he agrees.

A lost phone, out of battery and dusty, completely abandoned._ Not a pink phone, luckily_, but still an expensive piece of property few would be content to leave behind.

'It's dead', I comment, as it won't power back on.

'Hence my interest', Sherlock confirms.

'Could have been dropped weeks ago.'

'Not dusty enough, I would say. No signs of deposited rain on the surface, and it has drizzled three days ago, John. And, lastly, the cattle hasn't trampled in its incessant grazing. No, it's been lost, dropped or planted here, but it's a dangerous choice to leave behind your phone on a trekking cross terrain, wouldn't you say?'

_Meh, our phones aren't working and here we are. We grew up without mobile phones, Sherlock._

_We grew up in the last century._

'It's a young man's phone, new, expensive, customized casing, vestiges of ultraviolent stamp entry passes to London night clubs. This phone, and its owner, do not belong here', Sherlock ponders, starting to look excited, twirling the phone in the air.

_Brings back memories._

'Could have been a hand down.'

He ponders me directly. When we met, at Bart's, for the first time, I let him borrow the old phone Harry had bequeathed me.

'The traces of ultraviolet ink would have worn out by now, John, and such instances of phones swapping hands are incredibly rare. Other people are very possessive over their phones, John. Or, more likely, over the secrets they hoard in them... Have you no secrets, John?' he taunts me with a silky voice.

I square my shoulders in defiance. 'I have plenty of secrets. I'm just really lousy with technology, you should see me type.'

He shudders. Pretends to, of course. I think.

'Yes, I believe I have seen you type', he says, breaking the strange stalemate gaze contest at last. 'John, I think we've stumbled onto a case.'

I blink. 'All we have to go by is a phone.'

'A _dead_ phone.'

'Ah, that makes it alright, then', I sarcastically say, as Sherlock is powering up towards the hill. 'If you happen to find a spare tyre while you're at it... just saying', I add, as he glares my way._ He's already having too much fun._

_**.**_

'Sherlock, what you said earlier... about taking me on as the professor's assistant...'

He twitches a smile on his lips. 'There's a job vacancy for you, John.'

I laugh half-heartedly. 'I can't just pack me up to go to your new job with you, Sherlock. I'm not a good chair, a reliable laptop, or a comfy old sweater.'

He hums and tilts his head appreciatively. 'You'd know all about old sweaters.'

'Naturally', I play along. 'Sherlock, you do realise you don't_ need_ me.'

'Nonsense, John, I'll always need you', he answers as a knee-jerk response – as if it were a baseline set idea engrained in him. It's endearing, really.

'Honest, Sherlock...'

'And yet you are smiling, John.'

'Of course I am, but—'

'Last time I was at Uni it didn't quite work out for me, John', he interrupts me as always, but this time there's an edge of vulnerable anxiety in his voice. I let his words sink in.

Yeah, a socially isolated genius with no support network found himself in the throes of addiction, a distraction he actively sought as a coping mechanism. It's easier to explain how Sherlock could mistreat himself in such way than it is to scrutinise how he got clean. I suspect the DI Lestrade would know a lot more on that, and even has had a hand by redirecting a natural detective to his love of morbid mental puzzles, but the loyal inspector won't be the one breaking confidence.

'Right', I say, because the silence is quickly becoming oppressive. 'There's that. But I'm not your battle shield. You don't need me to keep clean, you know that.'

He nods, and it breaks my heart that it's not a fully confident nod.

Maybe I could do fewer hours on the medical field, and I could follow Sherlock at first, just to easy him in, to nudge him in the direction of his own success. Shore up his confidence until he sees what I always see. Suppose I could do that...

It's a colossal ask – and Sherlock is too proud to ask, but this hope hangs from trembling grey-green eyes set on mine – and a decision I need to take after careful consideration.

'Let's keep walking, Sherlock. It's getting hot and I'm feeling hungry.'

He huffs in anticipation of something to come. 'Thank you for the considerate forewarning.'

Sherlock always claims, quite unjustly, that I get into a foul mood when I'm hungry. _Preposterous_, I say.

The detective sighs and takes up his phone. I clearly see him powering on his device.

'I thought you said you didn't have network coverage.'

'I lied. I was enjoying our road trip, why finish early, before I even made my final decision?' He's looking unrepentant and arrogant.

_No, wait._

'But the road, the tyres, the tinned beans?' I protest, looking back at the distance where we left the van.

Sherlock shrugs. 'What if there was a real emergency, John? I couldn't endanger you like that!'

I glare at my friend. He pays me no attention, dismissing it as Hunger Talk.

'That way, John. There's a village a few miles away. Can't you forage your way into a better mood?'

_**.**_

As we go higher in the hill, the soft heather covering gives way to grey, sterile, misshapen blocks of rock formations that preceded man's centuries old intervention in shaping the land. What we see now as scattered rocks, sprinkled upon the incline, are steady, deep rooted rock foundations that we stamp with our feet as we ascend.

'Sherlock, is "your" village the other side of this hill, and must we climb it instead of – I don't know – going around it?' I demand to know, as I start having to grab onto rock edges and dry twigs sticking out of the turfed cracks to keep steady on my feet. This is hardly a trek now, more of a climb.

My friend finally takes notice of my words. He seems abruptly snapped out of his daydream as the eyes me and the endless abrupt rocks piercing the ground.

'Oh, the village? No, we changed course two hours ago, John. I wanted to explore something I saw. _Or_ _thought_ _I_ _saw_... Did you seriously not notice? Aren't you meant to be a soldier or something?'

I groan and give up, throwing myself to a sitting position, half-reclined, on the shaded side of a rocky protuberance.

'And what did you see?' I ask despite myself. _Damn my curiosity._

The detective is eyeing an almost vertical rock wall, at the basis of which I found my hard seat. He paces as he eyes it, touches it, and follows his gaze upwards to the mightiest height, about 15 feet up. Finally he looks around and collects little fragments of rock from the ground, that he proceeds to start flinging up towards the top.

Looks like a child's amusing explorations.

'What are you—?'

He stops, still eyeing the top and hands out a piece of broken stone. 'Can you hit that green bit, there at the top?'

I shrug,_ yeah_. 'What is it, moss?'

'I don't think so.'

I fling my stone to the very top, and it bounces off whatever Sherlock found at the very top of the rock formation. As he must have predicted the unstable object slides smoothly down the rock wall's side.

It's a climbing rope, I recognise, making no movement inch forward to the unexpected find._ This isn't good._ Why should anyone leave this behind?

'Yes, it is', Sherlock says and takes the green rope in his hands. He yanks on the polyester weaved fabric and holds it in place. 'Expertly tied down. I think I'll have a look', he declares.

'Be careful, you don't want to break your neck.'

'I'm always careful, I bring my doctor with me.'

Near effortlessly, the bloody flexible and deceivingly skinny detective grabs hold of the rope and starts free climbing up the rock wall. I see his dress shoes slipping and scuffing on the rock here in there, but overall he trails upwards at the speed of his curiosity. Finally he holds himself to the very top and seats boyishly with one leg hanging out, from what I can see.

'What can you see, Sherlock?'

He slowly looks back down on me calm and starts pulling the rope up. I let go at once.

'It's a natural recess, a hideout in the rock, John. Erosion and time would have separated the portion you're contemplating from the rest I see extending at the back. Between them a sort of tunnel, not deep, but full.'

'Full of what?'

'Bones, John. Human bones.'

I blink. This is not what a graveyard usually looks like.

'Ancient human sacrifices dumping ground?' I try to explain the unexplainable.

'Only as old as titanium alloy metal plates, John.' I frown and rub my frail shoulder absentmindedly. 'Unless I'm very mistaken that shining down there is a hip replacement.'

Blasé as ever, Sherlock dutifully takes a record picture of what he sees, then carefully pins a paper clip on the end of the rope to fish out a couple of smaller bones to show the authorities and corroborate our story. If he had it his way, we'd be carrying long tibias over our shoulders on the walk away from here, like modern pillaging pirates, but he knows I'd protest.

'Just don't break your neck coming back down', I request, going back to my rocky seat, from where I can side see the entire valley.

_**.**_

'That's Harry's phone!' a frightened pale waitress gasps at the sight of the object on the local pub's beer garden's table.

Well, that's one improvised way of setting out witness identification of clues, and Sherlock and I willingly take our lucky break before dealing with the local police. We've just arrived at the nearest village, went by a garage arrange for a new tyre and stopped at the local pub for some food. The broken phone got on the table as we chatted over the strange find.

Sherlock takes the lead, acting innocently: 'You know the owner? Can we return him his property?'

'He's my boyfriend. Didn't return home last night. I don't know where he went', she adds, rubbing her elbow in a sheepish manner. 'We had a squabble. He's always going off with his mates. I suppose he misses his time in the big city and this place has more sheep and cows than it has people. He moved in with me because he loved me. He _loves_ me', she corrects looking at us, defiantly. Then briskly away.

She reminds me of Molly Hooper, the shy pathologist who is at times oblivious to her inner strength; who made a mastermind criminal sit down to have tea and telly with her cat, and tamed a consulting detective to being as polite as he can get; who asks "what do you need" instead of the socially distant "what is wrong".

Sherlock might have recognised something there too, for he's not as scanty as usual with our new clients.

'His mates weren't impressed with me, I think', she carries on, still torturing her left sleeve. 'Harry always had flashy women falling at his feet and when he found me I think he found it refreshing that I didn't care so much about the latest fashion clothes and constant selfies for the social media. I think he was rather tired of that.'

'You think', I understand, 'his mates will try to persuade him to return to his old life.' She nods, rather simply.

'I love him. I want him here with me.'

The young waitress looks sincere, for all I can tell. I glance over at Sherlock, forcing him to cross gazes with me._ You'll take this case,_ I want him to read my mind.

A flicker of a restless bony hand tells me silently he doesn't need to read my mind. He knows it, and he's on it, without even looking at me.

'We'll need a photo, a local map, a compass, and whatever John's good old fashioned common sense demands. We'll find you a boyfriend, miss.'

'_My_ boyfriend', she corrects.

'If you insist', my romantically challenged friend shrugs. I intervene at once:

'This is Sherlock Holmes, the great London detective.'

She finally flickers a small smile. 'Thank you, I really need your help.'

_**.**_

_**TBC **_


	86. Chapter 86

_A/N: I was meant to finish in this plotline in this posting, but I'll presume you want more after this one._

_Keep safe, keep strong. Stay kind. -csf_

* * *

_**IV.**_

'So we're not returning to London yet', I surmise.

'No. Case.'

The laconic detective is too absorbed in his reasonings to answer with full sentences. It's always a good sign, although it can make for awkward one-sided conversations, particularly in public.

Once, on the Underground, I explicitly commented to Sherlock that he wasn't paying me the slightest attention. He hummed in the affirmative. Lost in the realm of his thoughts, he identified something in what I said that required an answer. Any answer. There were several flickering looks our way at that hum, the Underground having chosen that particular moment to be exceptionally quiet. The majority of the onlookers were openly mocking me. And so it kick started a new tradition, Sherlock has yet to catch up on. If he's too lost in his head, I start saying crazy things and insisting on answers from the genius. Laconic as they may be, they can at least amuse with hilarity the public audiences. So far, Sherlock has publicly confirmed he likes blueberry muffins, sometimes doesn't wear underwear, has a secret poison embedded in the straps of his deerstalker hat, and can play the violin whilst standing on his head.

Some of these confidences strayed out into the public domain like wildfire.

Sherlock has yet to understand how our front door steps once got littered with offerings of blueberry muffins from the fans.

I'm not about to explain to him the other side effects of the public gullibility, lest he starts exploring it for his own gain. Suffice to say anything that gives an edge of mystery and nonconformity to the detective only helps his image, as far as I can see it.

'So you're saying we'll stay until the case is solved... Not another night in Harry's van, is it?'

'No.'

'Good, I'll hold you to that. You better be paying attention this time... Not like that time you used potassium permanganate solution to wash your hair, honestly there are still some purple hues on those curly locks.'

All my own fabrication, I'm afraid. Although I wouldn't put it past my distracted scientist friend.

He hums again, not absorbing a single word of what I said.

I really should be _honoured_ that he'd trust me this much to agree to just about anything I say without listening, shouldn't I?

Feels _lonely_, instead.

I pocket my hands to the very deep confines of the fabric, where the lint gathers to weigh my jacket down.

Something instantly snaps Sherlock out of his reverie, has he laser focuses his attention on me instead.

'What?' I ask, bewildered, in reaction.

He's suddenly looking through me, with that blank look he gets when he's studying rows of code on a laptop screen. He's winding back and reviewing what he missed. He frowns at the results.

I'm left to wonder what snapped him out of it in the first place. _I wasn't saying anything!_

'John, in our road trip are we allowed a small break so we can head to the local morgue?'

'Why, yes. It's your choice really, Sherlock.'

'Oh goody', he comments. 'Don't tell Molly, by the way, she would get jealous.'

_**.**_

Sat on a high stool at the corner of the local mortuary, I watch a feverish Sherlock clear a side desk of its contents, tossing them unceremoniously to the floor, drag the desk across the floor, and line it with the two available autopsy tables. The bewildered Pathologist and Assistant Pathologist watch in as much respectful awe as in fear of another tirade of disparaging comments on their level of work. That was the experienced consulting detective's passport into the forensic investigation. He quickly dispenses with the idea of nitrile gloves and picks the recovered grubby bones at an alarming speed, quickly settling them down in the correct skeletal position of the three victims, one to each flat surface, a champion might assemble a one thousand pieces jigsaw puzzle.

'Sherlock.' And I clear my throat to give him pause.

He stops immediately, out of loyalty, and checks in with me by means of a quick glance. He reads my mind and, with a brief nod, starts lecturing his way through his job.

'Jaw bone. Likely female, adult, all lower set of teeth still attached, good dental hygiene, going by the pattern of usage of the enamel surface a likely vegetarian. Nicotine stains in the front teeth, heavy smoker. Next, heel bone. Signs of multiple healed micro fractures. Possibly a high impact runner. Early signs of osteoporosis, possibly the victim was in their fifties, definitely not a professional sports person at all... John?'

I get up, receiving at the bone he tosses me casually. 'I agree', I say studying the classified structure. 'Slight deformation here, born out of years of stiletto heels usage, they really forced and unnatural posture on the foot arch, see? If you want to know a person, walk a mile in their shoes, they say', I comment, as he takes the heel bone back. He's interested.

'Would that be the stilettos or the running shoes, John?'

'Beats me, you're the detective.'

'How about that phalange on the table?' he asks me, pocketing the heel bone. Apparently his pocket is the temporary _Maybe_ pile.

I'm about to comment on a specific genetic trait of the bone growth when the morgue's door bangs shut forcibly behind me, making me jump. _We just lost our audience. _Sherlock and I stare at each other and shrugged.

'You need to gather interest from the audience, Sherlock.'

He nearly whines. 'But it's three skeletons, John! How can I make skeletons _even_ _more_ interesting?'

'I don't know, just ask questions?' I venture.

'That's silly. They won't answer you. You're not the skeleton bones whisperer, John. I grant you're a fine doctor, but these poor folks are beyond even your expertise.'

I shake my head, disguising a smile.

Sherlock continues: 'As for the Pathologist and his assistant, I'm doing their job and if they don't love their job, they shouldn't be here! Why did they leave when they could learn from our combined wisdom?'

I shake my head; no idea, made. You're the new professor here.

_Only it's not really going that well is it?_

For once, I see real doubt in Sherlock about his future professional career alteration prospects.

'Never mind them, Sherlock, they're idiots', I gather, annoyed.

My friend grins openly.

_**.**_

'You're here on your own?'

I'm back at the local pub for some grub, while Sherlock follows some leads in the local police headquarters, when I see the same young woman waiting on the tables outside.

'You work several shifts', I notice.

'Rent', she retorts, as an explanation. 'Harry hasn't returned home yet', she tells me, a sadness marked in her words like a child who has lost her puppy.

'My friend is on the case', I assure her. 'He'll do all he can to find your boyfriend.'

'You're here alone', she notes again.

'You'd be surprised, against popular belief, we can function independently. And I will take him some food, he could do with a couple of square meals.'

She takes a seat across the wooden table, suddenly very familiar.

'There is talk in town you've found three dead bodies.'

I nod, yes. She reaches over the table between us with a rag, rubbing circles on the wood. I notice she wears several rings on her fingers, easily half a dozen in each hand, that sparkle under the sunny daylight.

I wonder what deductions Sherlock would make of the abundance of jewellery, when it's quite simple to me. They make her feel special while she cleans grubby tables.

'All old history, I assure you. None was your boyfriend Harry. You gave us a clear timeline as to his whereabouts before his disappearance.'

She nods, looking relieved. 'I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if Harry got murdered after I brought him here. He didn't want to come, at first.'

I give her my most sympathetic look while taking another sip of my pint. 'It's hard to step away from everything you know, sometimes.'

'Old habits are hard to break', she agrees, suddenly noticing her glittering hand between us and taking it away. 'Does Mr Holmes know where you are?'

I blink. What an odd question, an idée fixe in her mind.

'Yeah, I told him, but I doubt he'll have heard me, though. Sherlock can be—'

I stop short, blinking hard to try to dispel the haziness in my sight.

I pull my hands back, away from that half drunk pint.

The glass is shinning under the midday's sun, glistening in all colours. A firework display of optical effects, a colourful aura indicative of a minor stroke or a likely narcotic in my drink.

The rainbow colours glitter as the jewels in the waitress' rings.

I look up to the innocent, eager face in front of me. Shielding my stunned expression from the few other patrons leaving the pub.

'You drugged me.'

She smiles benignly. 'John, you're cleverer than you think. You were about to find out. I couldn't have you tell your detective friend, could I?'

I feel like I'm swaying in my seat. I look all around me. The other seats are empty. No cars or people passing by. Not good.

'Sherlock will come for me.'

'I hope he does. I'd hate to have to go to London to get him.'

'He'll find you out.'

'Will he? None of the others did. Maybe I forgot to mention Harry was a detective too? And before him, there was a policeman, from the homicide squad. Before that there was a fifty year old woman, she was actually the mother of my previous boyfriend...'

As she says this, she looks down on her jewel studded fingers. _Mementos of her killings._

There are more skeletons out there, judging by numbers.

'Where's Harry?' I ask, harshly. It comes across thickly, as my voice is pasty.

Not my sister Harry. Another Harry. Who's Harry?

'He's in the cellar, in one of the empty beer drums. I need to wait get the forensic investigators to clear the woods, thanks to your meddling friend. Usually I chose a deserted spot and let the big birds feast. I take the clean bones afterwards. It's easy to dispose of someone when there's no one in sight for miles.'

'Those rock formations. You put the bones there, among the rocks.'

'I told you I grew up here. I know this land as the back of my hand.'

I'm swaying backwards, falling off the seat. She instantly grabs me by the jacket.

'Oh no, you don't! I'm not done with you yet, John.'

As a metaphorical darkness falls over me alone, I see her pickpocket my wallet remorselessly.

'That's so generous of you, John. It covers the pint and a new piece of jewellery for me. Think of it as a generous tip. It's always good to die with a kind gesture, don't you think?'

_**.**_

A hoodie is a poor substitute for a tailored coat, I decide, as I reach the local pub and fail repeatedly to flick up the garment around the collar. Must John subject me to a life of mediocrity? I huff, sure it's too much to bear, and the good doctor must be made aware of this at once.

I look around in the indoor area, having crossed the empty tables outside without seeing John. Someone has lit up the corner fireplace, there are a few plastered locals following the televised snooker championship, and absolutely no signs of John.

Great, has he got himself kidnapped again?

I hope not. I'm wanting to leave within the hour as soon as I find our killer. Surely John understands that?

I reach the counter where lazy stale pints in a tray waiting to be cleared. There's no one in sight, I might as well help myself to the taps if I wanted to be half as plastered as the locals. I doubt any of them is divising a scientific experiment on the _Saccharomyces cerevisiae_ fermentation process.

Even John—

I stop with a cold chill down my spine. I saw _something._ I reach over to one of the glasses. Smudged fingerprints on the glass. Left handed, a small but manly hand, stubby fingers, broad grasp – decisive, familiar. I fetch my pocket magnifying lens. Smudged ridges and loops, and no database fingerprints to compare my findings. Too familiar. Calluses as blank spots in the mountainous landscape of grease residue on the polished glass surface. I can identify an airline pilot by the left thumb, a butcher's cleaver calluses are easy as child's play, and John's mixed pattern of doctor and soldier are unmistakable.

_John._

The good doctor's thrifty mind would have him finish his two-thirds unexplored pint before leaving.

I raise the glass and sniff the stale beer.

The glass is dropped mechanically as my mind whirls trying to recognise the residue of narcotic. In the bitter tasting beverage it would be hard to discern unless you were looking for sabotage.

_John. Someone's got John._

Not Moriarty. Which is good. And bad. Moriarty would have kept John alive to mess with me. This unknown person attacking my best friend may be more ill judged than a lonesome criminal mastermind.

_No. Think, Sherlock Holmes. You can deduce who is behind this and how to find John._

_Be quick, though. John is in grave danger._

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	87. Chapter 87

_**V.**_

Standing behind the greasy counter, studying the POS system, quickly reading up on the establishment's sales records of the day,_ searching for John._ His illusive presence fading quickly as time passes on his abduction. New patrons are coming into the pub, obliterating John's comforting lingering presence. Someone has moved his chair already, the only one that was angled towards the table with the acute angle pointing at the left, like a left-handed person would leave it. In that John is not unique, but left-handedness is not a mainstream trait, and a useful tell. There is no way I can smell his presence, his scent long ago carried away by the open air breeze, just as any shed blond hairs or clothes fibres. All that is John's essence is quickly disappearing in front of my very own eyes. And the rowdy, loud, new pub clients; one of them actually had the nerve to interrupt me and call out for a round for him and his mates.

Just because I'm on the other side of the counter doesn't mean I actually work here!

It's this generic hoodie's fault. Never would have happened in my long coat.

The common idiot claimed that I was sub-par at the job and had poured out all the pints full of foam and no beer. I probably have, I needed to get him going and to not come back for more. He is moments away from an aggravated complaint to the pub owner, who finally shows up, raised by the rising commotion, half-drunk himself, like a true master expert on the scene. Likely outcome: _I'm about to get kicked out._

No sign of John within the roll of paying customers, as I reach the end of the day's transaction. No, can't be. I clearly_ saw_ John, he left his indelible mark in here as he does everywhere he goes.

John's presence is always incredibly loud to me.

'_Oi, you! What are you doing there?'_

I once lost John for two years. I know too well when I'm imagining John, and when his presence is real.

I look to the angry owner, huffing fretfully as he hurtles his sleep numbed body my way. Oh, time to make my leave. Can't stay to explain myself. Someone has John, my best friend got kidnapped.

The doctor is the one who lingers and pacifies with endless explanations. I'll just bolt out of here. Cellar – that will do nicely. There's usually an old coal shaft in old pubs, where the beer drums are rolled in on delivery days, and that's a neat escape.

_John._

I stop short with the owner and half the drunk patrons chasing me through the dingy backstairs, leading to the cellar. There, on the narrow walls, a trace of brown leather, just scratched on the dirty wall, and if it did not fully match John's favourite shoes I wouldn't have cared.

John's been dragged down these steps. Inertia lining that ominous scratch on the wall. No fight, subdued or too trusting. No, the angle, slightly too contrived – no,_ stupid_ – John was dragged down the steps, his shoes scraped the wall as they went unchallenged.

John loves those shoes, he's going to be upset. Ergo, John is subdued, unaware, the narcotic has rendered him powerless to resist being dragged away from me.

Okay, John, you have a valid excuse for being a no-show at the pub, you are forgiven.

There are loud poundings against the cellar door I wedged shut, its resistance about to be breeched. I need to hurry.

The cellar is a wide, low ceiling area, dimly lit by a small window high up, that casts light on hanging veils of cobwebs, likely kept for ambiance by the slob owner. The air is stale, heavy and impregnated with warm alcohol vapours. The atmosphere is so thick and indistinct that I'm struggling to pick up on John Watson in here. Can he still be here?_ Please._ Those other victims. Just bones discarded in the anonymous landscape, I don't know, can't tell, what happened to them. Let it not have been a similar fate to John's, too quick, to unbearable for me to ponder.

I'd be lost in a world without a friend like John. _Without John._

'John! Where are you?' I call out. Stupid move – too emotional, too vulnerable, too desperate – just as efficient as frantically looking around, circling on myself, making me dizzy, searching, begging for clues – looking for the army doctor.

_**.**_

'It's alright now, John.'

The cellar door flings opens, a flight of stairs away. I couldn't care less.

Kneeling on the floor, holding on to the limp body of my best friend, as he breathes quietly, unconscious, in my arms. I try to do the job that is his alone, to be the doctor, and I fail miserably, my treacherous mind going blank. I hesitate to touch him, touch his face, too scared of what I may find yet.

Above us, our two-faced client stops messing with the carbon dioxide tanks that the pub uses in the pressurised beer.

_Carbon dioxide poisoning, neat._ Not as efficient as carbon monoxide, but given time just as deadly producing asphyxiation. The skeletal remains of the victims won't show any signs of the COD, if they're ever found abandoned in the rural landscape too soon.

In the semi-obscurity, I desperately try to assess John's condition. Has he been poisoned by the lethal gas already? Is he going to be alright?

He snores. And reaches out for my hoodie as a child snuggling in a warm blanket.

If he snores he breathes, there is no lack of oxygen.

The narcotic will soon wear out of his system. It always does when I'm drugging him, at least.

I find I can breathe too, it comes as a small revelation.

The angry mob finds us at the bottom of the winding stairs. Someone turns on the electric lights that flood low ceiling cellar – finally someone acts reasonably – and finds the odd party assembling by rows of beer kegs.

I hamper John's head with the hoodie I've taken off, lowering him softly to the ground._ This won't take long._

I get up, not without some regret – John won't hear my brilliant deductions, he'll be upset with that – and look around at my audience, taking a deep breath before I start speaking–

The fake client speaks first:

'I think he was trying to kill his friend, dad. I was down here, fixing the tanks' leak again, and he slowed up, dragging the other man... Oh, dad, I'm scared!'

Can't help rolling my eyes. The _damsel_ _in_ _distress_ routine. This is why John needed to be awake, really. He'd put an end to this nonsense very quickly – John is the witness to this woman's schemes, but he's too busy playing Sleeping Beauty on the floor.

'There's a perfectly logical explanation', I start.

For some reason no one ever asks for it, whenever I say that.

'Grab them!' the father directs to his mates.

I step at once in front of my fallen friend; need to keep John safe in the midst of this parody.

The young woman inches closer too, contrary to any killer's relieved instincts. I frown at that, but there's hardly the time for analysis. I'm about to be forcibly manhandled by three or four half-drunks brutes, and that's even before the police gets here. How inconvenient.

'Stop it now!'

The strong command makes us all turn our heads and still ourselves.

That an awkward, still getting himself up, groggy John could shout out a quiet command that turns all players in the room to instant submission is certainly a product of his military training. That he immediately reads the situation is pure strategy. And that he quiet and decisively acts upon it to defend me is _all_ _John_, the strong soldier under the unassuming façade.

'She's the killer we've been looking for, I'm afraid', John accuses simply, about the waitress. 'Nearly got me and my best friend here too. If you don't believe me, ask that beer casket over there.'

The leader of the riot party and owner of the establishment looks over at where John pointed and states coolly:

'It's empty. It's an historical artefact.'

I quip in: 'It's also big enough to conceal a man's body. A dead man's body. Asphyxiated by carbon dioxide and half-preserved in fermented alcoholic beverage. Granted, there's not enough ethanol content in beer for a full embalming, that would be a poor attempt if I ever saw one...' John holds in a chuckle, that refocuses me at once. 'But it holds off the rotting stench enough for the first few days until the body is moved.'

I glance at John. He doesn't fail to deliver a proud smile as a recompense for my quick deductions.

The father looks at the young woman. John looks away from the scene, gallantly. Maybe he already knew that the father would doubt his daughter and check the casket. He must have sensed something wrong in her a long while back. Or, at least, my friend would wish to believe murderers are distinctive from the regular folks on more grounds than just societally instilled morality.

An old casket becomes the epicentre of all morbid interest, as it's opened for us all to behold its unusual contents.

The crowd of patrons gasp at the finding, one looks positively nauseated. The young murderess slumps on one of the beer kegs. John quickly confirms the discovered body is beyond medicine's power. I handcuff the young woman as one of the clients feels now sober enough to dial for the police.

'Sherlock, you had handcuffs with you?' John asks me, sounding curious.

'Just drop it, John. Pocket magnifying glass and fingerprints kit also. Won't leave home without some essentials, what kind of detective do you assume I am?'

We cross gazes and we both giggle to the shock of an audience.

_**.**_

'Kidnapped_ again_', I notice quietly.

The van's back doors are open onto a nice sunset, that helps wash away the lingering effects of the lethargy in my body and mind, and the shock discoveries of the past day. Sherlock and I sit quietly, leaning back on a rolled up blanket, enjoying the view.

'Yes, John. I wish you would stop making a habit of being taken away to be ritualistically murdered if I don't intervene in the nick of time.'

I smile at that. 'Sure. Just as soon as you do that too.'

'I'm glad I found you, though', he admits.

It must have been bad, if he's willing to voice this much when usually only stubborn silent ignoring of past events would be permitted between us.

'Case closed, then', I surmise.

He nods. 'End of the distraction.'

I can feel some tension creeping back to the detective's stance, at my side. I allow it to grow unchallenged, as the night brings new sounds to the land. Insects buzzing, the birds stilling after their sunset performance, the creek nearby seems to grow louder in the countryside silence.

'Am I on a road, John?'

'It's a metaphor, Sherlock, but, yes, of course you are.'

'Am I a stationary object or moving, according to the second law of physics?'

I huff, amused. 'It's really up to you, mate.'

He ponders the same still night sky, allowing some of the landscape's slow pace influence him.

'Are you on that metaphorical road with me?'

I nod, quite sure. 'I'm there every part of the way.'

He nods slowly in reply. 'Feels like you've been on my journey even before I met you.'

My smile is open and honest. He trails his head to face me straight on, analysing me, because Sherlock can't turn off that giant thoughts magnet of his.

Feels nice to be a part of something so much bigger than me. Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and he's going places, righting wrongs, saving lives.

'Do you mean before you advertised to Mike for a flatmate?'

He nods, shyly looking away. 'I've always hoped to find... a companion. I think I had almost forgotten it, though. Didn't think I'd ever find_ you._'

'Someone like me', I correct him._ He's so clingy._

'You', he insists. _It had to be me_. I turn my head to find his crystalline green eyes as he holds my gaze in the dim light inside the van.

Don't think he'd have said this to me back in London. The fast pace city just another layer of his carefully constructed armour.

'I'm flattered, Sherlock.'

'Don't be. It's a heavy burden', he advises me seriously. Ominously.

The surprise of it makes me chuckle. He is at once shocked by my reaction._ Pull the other one._ How can a world class genius be so equivocated about his incredible worth as a friend and a companion?

I turn my smile to the open starry night outside the van. 'I think our roads must have been destined to meet.' He keeps silent, watching me attentively. Dismissing my words for the lack of scientific rigour? No, seems more than that. Wanting to see the predestined roads I see, wanting to believe in a reason behind the chance that brought us together, so that it may keep us together.

Smirking to myself, I add: 'I took the long way home.'

'That's alright, you had lives to save in a foreign land at war. As far as excuses go, it's a valid one.'

'Would we have ended up_ together_ if we hadn't met earlier, do you reckon?' I ask in a soft whisper. _Before so much destruction in my life?_

'No', he whispers his answer. _In his life too._

'Does that mean it was meant to be?' I insist. That there was a reason for the twists and turns on my own road?

He surprises me by stating:

'It means I could have been imprisoned for accidentally killing a few flatmates in our flat. Poison, electrocution, asphyxiation, third degree burns, and so forth. I don't expect ordinary flat mates last longer than goldfish.'

I giggle full-heartedly. 'You wouldn't go to prison. Mrs H would help you embalm the bodies and hide them under the floorboards.'

He hums, content with my creativity. He's rubbing off on me. 'I bet she would.'

'She really cares about you, Sherlock.' _We all do._

'I know', he says, and there is no quick wit about it. Just appreciation. 'She's adopted you too, John. I'll always be her favourite, but it's quite disgusting the way you keep smiling your way through her affections.'

I know better than to take him seriously. Our talk is turning weird. All the best, open talks do, it's their natural course,_ or curse._

'Have you reached a decision about the job offer?'

He hums in the affirmative.

'You need me. You get yourself kidnapped all the time.'

'I get myself and you out of it all the time too.'

'True. I've taken that into account also, when making my decision.'

'So what is it?'

He tosses, turns over, and turns off the silly fairy lights.

'You'll find out in due time, John. Only remember anything is possible.'

I huff at the teaser, but smile to the van's ceiling.

_Yes, anything is possible with Sherlock._

_**.**_

* * *

_Belated A/N: There's an unwritten duty to return your characters in the same state you found them, but that doesn't mean you can't have some fun with them before then. I'd expect Sherlock to get kicked out of any and every lecture he fronts. I'll investigate that and let you know at some point if I find out. -csf_


	88. Chapter 88

_**.**_

It's a recurrent tradition, marking an anniversary of death and destruction, but also of a new beginning back in London.

In some ways, I'm not entirely sure John is aware of doing it. Going through the motions that are deep set in his subconscious mind. He grieves a loss, ponders unstable times, mourns what could have been instead, bashes himself internally over how better it could have been – as if he alone held the power over fate – he pleads to inconsistent and enigmatic higher powers over what cannot be changed, until finally he gives in, submits to the past and acknowledges it fully, wrapping himself in a light veil of anguish from which he'll emerge a while later, hours or days, back at his full force, soldiering determination and optimistic belief, for the future yet to be determined.

Every year I see John recreate his journey in a desperate, if morbid, attempt to reconcile his personal story with a bullet that nearly ended it prematurely, a medical flight to London, and a restart in a shattered life.

Society commemorates birthdays, anniversaries, funerals, and every other established roadmark in a regular lifetime. It has yet to legitimise John's unique tragedy.

It's not about the sniper's bullet that removed him from the battlefield, or the subsequent infection that threatened to finish what an enemy projectile had started. And what a vile enemy it will have been a sniper that shot a doctor trying to save a life in a deadly conflict; there's no honour in shooting a saviour, no matter what side of the war you find yourself in.

It was not the return to London or the months of physical therapy, whilst isolated and invisible in a once familiar world that had no more use to extract from a life defining career. It was the prospect of an empty, detached, future that damaged John the most. Being suddenly useless when he once commanded power over life and death, fighting supermarket automated checkouts (and losing), catching the packed Underground routinely, when he once had the name, a voice, an army family.

It was not a fall of pride that demoralised John Watson. Pride is elitist and it isolates one high above the rest, while John was eager to connect with this London that no longer recognised him, or welcomed him more than any other anonymous face among the crowd.

It was not a loss of career or income, for John is in all little attached to social recognition or material goods. Apart from a few possessions he treasures – favourite jumpers, coffee mug, illegal gun – that all fit easily into a duffel bag, John brought very little to account for into 221B.

The prospect of reinvention never seemed to weigh heavily on John's mind either, with that quiet, stable sense of self that leads him to stay true to himself.

Broken of body and mind, and disconnected from his family and purpose in life, one would have expected John to have been close to giving up on his new, imposed fight – but that would mean not knowing the amazing, brave and extraordinary person he is.

Not because he's a fighter and he rebuilt himself as the valorous, equal partner of a mad consulting detective. I recognise the immense achievement in those prizes, conquered through gritted determination and daily fight.

Rather because John would never allow himself to give up. Always the hopeful, forever the sarcastic optimist, the man who is ever curious for more, to where he can take himself and protect his friends.

I will not deny John Watson entered 221B with this explicit idea of protecting me. _He still thinks I'd take that murderous cabbie's wrong pill, ha! If I'd take any it'd be the right one! _John may never have said as much, but his constant attention to my eating, sleeping, breathing habits were proof of attentive care. For my part, I allowed it. In his urge to role play, he demanded of himself a pristine behaviour as my example. By being myself, I made sure he took care of himself.

I too wanted to protect him. Lest he went shooting random cabbies to save other detectives' lives, and John's honest face makes him such a terrible liar that he'd be in deep trouble before the week's end.

That was only the beginning, and John has saved my life spectacularly every other week, and steadfast with his care and devotion most every day.

_The constant debt I will forever endeavour to repay._

So when I see the man looking tired, stoic, defeated but marching on, with the periodicity of another year on the shocking events that brought him into my life, I know it's only a revisit of the past, and that in a couple of days he'll notice the copper sulphate solution preserved hand kept in a jar in the cereal cupboard. That is to say, he'll snap out of his abstractions and his brooding over an unfair past he could not choose, and he'll return to his quiet calm, attentive self.

I miss him, when he makes himself far, all the way from the armchair across from mine. Unreachable, revisiting the painful memories of his past. I wish I could grab him, shake him, and remind him he's happier now. It turned out alright, if I may say so myself... But only he can judge that. And every year I fear he'll conclude he's made the wrong choice, he's in the wrong place.

_That would be incorrect. I know that, because he fits here. Into our lives. So perfectly._

_**.**_

On passing by I make sure to leave John a cup of tea, freshly brewed, to the best of my abilities at least. It's always presumptuous to believe he'll notice, or give it more particular attention than the dusty crevice on the fireplace's grate he's been death staring for ages now. There are four cups of tea on his side table with varying temperatures of the said liquid, along with three abandoned books one of which he has yet to realise is in Portuguese. (Can John read Portuguese? Who knows?)

I huff and bring my knees up, wrapping them in my arms. It always leaves me this discomfited when John is so clearly distracted. He's acting like a man in two different places at once; here and in his memories, defying all logic and laws of physics.

_That's John alright. He's a universe in himself, where all my analytical rules do not apply._

Time alone will bring John back to himself. It's a morbid anniversary of a tragic loss in the direction of his life, one he honours every year, one he must bear alone in his mind.

_**.**_

'John, I'm taking a case. Will you come with me?'

I watch raptly as the doctor takes dragging seconds to allow my words to carry meaning to him.

'I'm a bit tired', he lies, 'maybe next time?'

His blue eyes, up until now unfocused and chasing shadows of the past in the familiar room, now look straight into mine, pleading me to call him out on his deception.

'Come on, John. I need you. He's a strangler! I need backup.'

He looks away. I must have said the wrong things, the connection has not been established, it has failed. Radio silence.

'Lestrade will be there. He's got a service gun.'

'Lestrade won't let me take the case if you're not there again. He'll think I murdered you in a fit of boredom.'

'Hmm-hmm.'

I grab my scarf with a twang of anguish. Without John, catching the Cargo Lift Strangler is of little fun and no consequence.

Maybe I could let the strangler carry on? Anger, out of listless John would be a bonus at this point, surely.

However, something out of my valorous friend has seeped deep into me, tainting me with his heroism, and I cannot allow the Cargo Lift Strangler to keep succeeding at his murderous impulses. Seriously, it's as if he's begging me to be stopped now. That's what I must do, with or without John there to watch me.

_I'll do it in John's honour instead._

_**.**_

'John, I swallowed poison by mistake.'

His blue eyes jump at those words, the only part of my friend who seems to capture some interest. He quickly scans me.

'How much poison?' he asks me in his steely voice that it is an echo of the John I miss.

'I licked the spoon I was mixing the solution with by mistake.'

A shadow of an amused grimace crosses his face. There one second, an empty void the next.

'I'll keep you in observation, don't go anywhere, let me know if you start experiencing discomfort. And don't do it again...'

I smile. A glimpse of a victory here. A proof John is still John, from somewhere in the past he's lost at right now. Making his way home from the dangerous sandy deserts.

_**.**_

'John, Molly is bringing me a few fresh corpses from the morgue at last!'

He shuffles his sleep bound feet to the proximity of the kitchen kettle. Dishevelled, with a hint of facial hair, in a very creased t-shirt, he is painting the picture of a man who hasn't groomed himself in days.

One day, four hours, twenty seven minutes to be precise.

'Right.' He frowns at the kettle and ticks it off. 'I'll clear off then, you'll need space for your experiments.'

Flabbergasted, I watched him leave without his tea.

I drop my best cup of tea yet on the doorstep to his room two hours later, along with a quick resume of my findings._ Thank you, John._

_Wish you had been there with me. I found the murderer, and saved a life, it will cheer you up._

_**.**_

Lestrade has come to answer John's telepathic distress signal. His friendship with our good doctor is definitely different from mine, but he too must have sensed something bothering our brave friend. Perhaps it was a missed call, or an uncharacteristic pull out of a scheduled football match viewing. John is a creature of habits, and his friends will judge him by his predictive routine. In this case, the clueless inspector has proven some worth to his detective title, coming to investigate John's absence.

'He's upstairs. He's not seeing anyone. He ate a small portion of Cantonese Takeaway earlier, drinks the tea I leave at his door, and uses the rest room regularly. John will snap out of it, inspector, he just needs... time.'

Lestrade looks at me funny, as if he saw something in my report other than reliable, independent statistics.

'You've been keeping a tally', he comments. I nod, tilting my head to a notebook at the edge of the living room's desk. _The tally is real._ The inspector misses the cue, such as he misses the extra layers of rosin on my bow, as I keep myself occupied directly below John's room. To a musician, any drifting sound a sensorial input, in this case telling me of John's state of mind.

He's been in bed all afternoon. Not at all like John, even after late night chases.

'If you're not careful you'll get mushy with all that caring, Sherlock!'

I shiver at the blow of such a prospect. Damn Lestrade's sense of humour. He speaks again:

'I know you're on the case, and I know you care about John, but I got to ask – have you tried distracting him, letting him talk it out, be nice to him?'

I roll my eyes. _Idiot._ John is not an experiment. And yes, of course I tried it all. Everything John himself taught me as I trudged my own dark patches. Before I can say anything in my defence, Lestrade somehow reads it off me.

'Yes, of course you tried. John has made you more _human_, hasn't he?' the inspector concludes in a fatherly tone.

Having had enough now, I grab my violin and bring the bow softly into contact with those taunt, melodic strings.

'New music? It's a bit melancholy, hope you're not coming down with the same our friend upstairs has got into him.' He gets a glare for being such a classical music troglodyte. 'Fine, suit yourself, Sherlock. I just came for the yellow eyed corpse case you said you solved. Do you have my files somewhere? Coffee table? Kitchen table? Sherlock, are those pickled livers? No. Wait. No. Don't mind me asking, I don't wanna know.'

Lestrade finally locates his manila file and leaves with it, knowing full well it also contains the case deductions of liver failure due to years of chronic alcoholism and a misfortunate accident over the railing of a cargo ship docked in Liverpool, the currents bringing the body ashore to the Thames estuary.

I play on, as I mentally review my strange conversation with the inspector. He seems to have this perception over my decisions, choices and thoughts. He thinks he knows me. He is spectacularly wrong.

_**:**_

A long hot shower, a quick shave, and a fresh set of clothes are all I need before going downstairs to face Sherlock. I believe I owe him an apology. I haven't been quite myself. That has been unfair on my friend and flatmate. I must face Sherlock at once and try to explain myself, the turmoil of thoughts that have assaulted me for the last few hours, days.

_I haven't been a good companion._

As I descend those last few steps I hear the kettle going off. The sensory input of hot boiling water makes me miss the tangy taste of tea. I come into the kitchen determined to make us the familiar beverage, I find Sherlock already putting out two mugs.

'Oh, hiya, Sherlock. I thought I'd find you here. You don't seem to have left the flat at all after that case I declined.'

'Tea?' he asks me carefully, but in his green eyes I read a completely different question.

'Yes.' _I answer all the questions, told an untold._

'Good', he decides. We both slip into opposite chairs at the kitchen table.

'Feeling better?' he asks, stunning me with this honest, straightforward manner.

No longer in need of a subterfuge, I nod. 'Yes, thank you.'_ I had a little nap, lulled by the sound of a constant melody, I followed it home. It helped._

'I hope my violin has not bothered you.'

'Not at all. I see you cleared the kitchen table.'

'Someone had to', he comments. Then he smirks, knowing he has make me wonder if you'll ever do it again._ I know he won't._

'Sherlock, I have been a bit off colour', I start...

'Just drop it, John.'

He says no more, but those words carry hidden meanings between us now. He knows what it meant to me to have his support and constancy.

I have indeed been blessed with a truly great friend. He may not be able to fix all twists and turns in my life, he most certainly cannot fix my past for me, but I can never doubt his support and care. Without pressuring me, he has succeeded at supporting my return. And I suss he knows, he suspects, that this may not be the last time. Memories of the past sometimes come back to haunt me. But with Sherlock by my side I fear not the next time they threaten to draw me under the surface. You see, I heard a story as it was told through the melodic lines a violin composition. The melancholy undertones of side notes patrolling the score lines in an isolated lonely march were joined by the supportive chords of a beautiful friendship, tangling and intermingling, as the fuller, beautiful, supportive music formed reminded me of hope, and dreams, and a future yet unwritten. I may have not believed Sherlock if he tried telling me that in so many words. But his music transcended a language I found deceitful, and pierced straight through my self-imposed protective barriers, into my heart. When the English language could have been still void of meaning and littered with platitudes, I found comfort in the familiar thrills of the language of sounds, carrying emotions, silent praise and blusterous promises of better days.

I'm afraid I'm not a musician myself, and if I were I would not have attained this level of master craftsmanship over an instrument that I could speak so honest and generously. I will not back out of a challenge when I see one. Sherlock is my friend, then I will keep attentive to finding an opportunity to repay such beautiful generosity.

'Next tea is on me, Sherlock.'

'If you insist, John. You can make tea all the time from now on. Your tea is far better in quality anyway.'

I am blessed indeed, recompensed in not having given up when times were dark everyday. I know now that there is light among the shadows. A part of me wishes I would have known this when the times were darker. Perhaps that's the magic of it. That if I had known things would get better, I would have been too restless missing something I had not yet, to properly fight for it. I am at a different stage now. I will not rest and take it for granted. I will always marvel at the wonderful light that is my truly supportive friend, and how different life could have been, almost was, but now I know better. I look forward to our future.

_**.**_


	89. Chapter 89

_A/N: I don't really describe the characters of my own creation, you may notice. Firstly because this is supposed to be a short story, or micro story (if that exists), format. As it turns out, if you get the vibe, the name (Chandler or other) and the hair colour, height, weight, they all hardly matter._

_Usually, you could replace the new characters with blue reptilian aliens and it would still work. (Go ahead, do that, sometimes I do it too, when I'm bored. I'll start you off. John makes the visiting potential client a cuppa while the alien tells his story to the detective. Now John is not an idiot, so he is most impressed that the blue skin paint is not smearing onto the porcelain teacup from the blue lips and fingertips. He does not ask why a blue reptilian alien, he gets it is a disguise as soon as the client admits he's a simple bank clerk most days. Sherlock is less impressed; it's obvious the second set of nostrils is the fake one because it makes no evolutionary sense. Is he bothered with the quirky self expression of a bank clerk? Not in the least, we all play a part in society, it's just another front, like a woman's heavy set of eyelashes or a man's silk tie. In fact, the case has nothing to do with the client's appearance, it's a bank robbery that Sherlock and John avoid in the nick of time.)_

_I hope my stories to be read in the spirit of true acceptance. Even if, personally, I'm a plain Jane. It's all fine. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

The hour is late, and the fluorescent light tube above the kitchen table is buzzing in the quiet hours of London, as Sherlock and I have only just returned from a case. Yes, we have resumed our active investigations, following all possible and wise precautions in this coming-out-of-lockdown life.

Sherlock is still dressed in drag – there is no limit he'll impose on himself for a case – and he actually looks quite good. I was the backup (and didn't get a makeover) as I was rushed to the scene straight out of a hospital shift, and I wouldn't have had the time to create a look. Sherlock's voluminous wavy black wig and daunting high brows, heavy eye lashes and glittering purple eyeshadow really play off his high cheekbones and green eyes. And the drop dead gorgeous dress has to be as uncomfortable as the massive heels, but he carries them off with absolute elegance and confidence, born out of respect, even as we have returned to Baker Street. Holding up a bejewelled curved pipe – what a strange prop, a nod to a vintage detective archetype perhaps – he leans back on the hard chair at the kitchen table and tiredly eyes the ceiling.

'You better not have real tobacco in there', I state calmly. It's not even lit. 'You gave up smoking, you don't need that now.'

He smiles goofily to the ceiling.

'Not tonight. We found our killer. That will do for me tonight, John. I have no need for chemical stimulants as I'm naturally feeling great already.'

'You're feeling great', I repeat, suspicious. That never lasts with Sherlock. He'll be pestering me for a case soon.

The detective bachelorette finally looks back at me. 'I will feel better once you help me out of this corset, John. I don't think I can make it out on my own.'

I chuckle. 'How did you get yourself in it in the first place, that's real mystery.'

'Oh, I've got my methods', he'll reveal nothing.

I'm about to say something when the doorbell rings._ Client._ Sherlock and I look at one another.

'I can tell them to come back at a decent hour', I volunteer.

'No, my dear John, our work never stops. Have them come up. I'm certainly not attempting to go down the stairs in these heels again. I shall require more practice, before I break a hip. Mrs Hudson helped me earlier.'

'I don't know', I retort, getting up, 'you did quite well as far as I could see.'

'It's all down to practice', he replies, in a fake modesty that really does not suit him. 'I'm also a fast learner.'

The doorbell rings again. Continuously._ Impatient, this client._

I glance at Sherlock, he looks a bit paler now. I think. Hard to tell, under so much foundation.

Descending the steps two at a time, I reach the front door. I hope Mrs Hudson won't wake up on account of our comings and goings. I would hate her feeling unsafe over our late night visitors.

I open the front door as the doorbell starts ringing again; to a tall, bespoke dressed man in a three piece tailored suit and an elitist attitude etched on the expensive fabric itself. As soon as he ponders me, he dismisses me:

'I came to see Mr Sherlock Holmes.'

'It's a bit of a late hour for that.'

'My driver saw the lights were on. By the way', he hands me a thick grain calling card bearing the Holmes family crest (what is represented in the crest I'm not at liberty to discuss), 'Mycroft sent me.'

I tilt my head to the side. 'I wonder why he didn't come with you.'

_I might just call him to double check at this late hour. It might wake up Mycroft, but you can never be too careful these days, can you? _Pocketing the calling card, I asked politely: 'Come on up!'

The 17 steps don't phase the guest, but he does glance at me midway as if surprised I'm preparing to eavesdrop on his private consultation._ Tough luck, mate, I live here._

I lead this snob to the kitchen, where Sherlock is boiling the kettle. The man stands by the door, ostentatiously looks around for Sherlock Holmes in the kitchen and living room and finally stands baffled looking at a detective in disguise.

'Sherl... Mycroft sent him', I warn.

Green eyes narrow under a dam of glitter.

The client takes a respectful bow and claims: 'I was hoping to see Mr Sherlock Holmes, is he in?'

Sherlock and I glance at each other. Surely the man can't be this daft. Is he putting us on or refusing to acknowledge Sherlock at his current look? My friend won't have that. He will champion anyone's right to self expression (sometimes calling them morons, but never refusing to acknowledge them, there's a difference).

'I'm... Sherl-ey', he says, with a shy smile and a flirtatious twinkle of eyelashes. I stifle a groan.

'Are you Mr Holmes's secretary?'

Sherlock squints, eyeing the man as if he could be legally blind.

I don't think he is, but good call.

'I suppose you can say you'll have to go through me to get to Sherlock Holmes', he says at last.

_Shirley._ All night we searched for a stage name. This will do, for now at least.

'I must leave something in his possession that no one ever might get their hands on. Is it safe?'

'If it's a smoking gun, that's really John's department', Sherlock says drily. 'Why else would Mycroft send you here?'

The man removes something small from his vest pocket.

'It's a signet ring.'

Sherlock snatches it and studies it for a couple of seconds. He looks... interested.

'It's most important', the posh man says. 'I can only return in the morning, I'll tell my story to Mr Sherlock Holmes then.'

I cross my arms in front of me.

The detective waves the client off. 'John, escort him downstairs. Mr Sherlock Holmes will hear the case tomorrow at 11:30. He'll have a lie in first.'

Resuming all his dignity, the man bows and leaves, with me following closely.

What an odd business, this. The whole thing's a parody, surely. But Sherlock seemed to take it seriously enough, once he studied the signet ring. What could it possibly mean?

As the front door opens for the client to leave, a new visitor arrives; Mycroft Holmes himself. The two men shake hands but remain suspiciously silent.

I guess I'm the doorman tonight.

'Come on up, Mycroft. Your friend left us something.'

'As he should', the older Holmes brother comments enigmatically. I bang the front door shut on the client getting inside his chauffeured car.

Microsoft effortlessly mounts those 17 steps in wide strides, making it upstairs as if he was in a race to win. I arrive not three seconds later.

We find Sherlock pouring the tea. And I mean Sherlock. Looking like Sherlock. No wig, no makeup, long dressing gown and pyjama bottoms, bare feet on the linoleum floor.

How did he have the time?

'Mycroft', the detective drawls if bored.

'Sherlock', the brother mirrors the tone of voice.

'Is no one saying my name?' I break the ice, reaching for one of the tea mugs. Both brothers stare at me.

Mycroft returns to his business attitude first.

'Sherlock... and John... that man you just saw, you must forget his face, his measurements, his accent, his mannerisms, all about him. He must never be identifiable.'

'Oh, really, why?' Sherlock drawls.

'To save a life.'

The two brothers' shared gaze is penetrative and strong, intelligent in a fluid language of their own. All I know is Sherlock surprises me by obeying a directive of his brother for once.

'What man?' he pretends.

I stare at Mycroft.

'What about the ring? Is that non-existent too?'

'Not at all, John. That signet ring is a free conduit, a pass to travel across London's finest and prevent a war in a foreign country.'

Sherlock rolls his eyes. 'How charmingly Victorian!' he mocks, but clasps the ring in a closed fist. _He's taking the case._

'Yes...' Mycroft comments, disdainfully. 'You'll get more details tomorrow, Sherlock. I hope you are not too busy as a showgirl if you get more details, say, at noon?'

Sherlock keeps a stony composure. Mycroft leans closer to tell him: 'There's glitter on your hair, brother mine, and you've got blisters on your feet from wearing tight high heel shoes. Together they are quite revealing, don't you think?'

Sherlock smirks. I interrupt: 'Alright, everyone, get going. It's late, I need to sleep. Mycroft, stop dropping mystery clients at our doorstep in the middle of the night', I add as the older Holmes leaves and I close the flat door behind him. 'Sherlock, why are you looking so smug?'

'Oh nothing, it's something between me and my brother, you wouldn't understand.'

No matter how much I press Sherlock, he makes no further disclosure after that. Instead he presses on: 'John, the corset? I really can't breathe any longer with this torturous contraption.'

'Oh, right!' I hurry, as he pushes back the dressing gown.

'It's a good thing you tackled the murderer yourself, John', he comments, half-strangled.

Poor Sherlock, he'll always go the extra mile for his love of exceeding perfection.

_**.**_

I'm getting my stuff ready for the next work shift by the time Sherlock's late night client returns at 11:30 sharp the next day. Sherlock Holmes himself assumes the etiquette of a dandified host ushering our client to my vacant armchair, then sitting opposite him. I'm watching them vaguely from the kitchen, as I sort my things out.

'It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Sherlock Holmes', the man states as if he had never laid eyes on the detective before in his life. Could be a simple act, rather than a deceived mind, but somehow it feels more constrictive than that. It feels like he is leading Sherlock to act and to be as he expects of the great detective. A figurehead to his own fame. A sonant name from a great family in a polished suit; anything else is to be averted, concealed, belittled as an anomaly, a _freak._

This guy needs to learn how to live beyond his stuffy traditional views of the world.

'Won't doctor Watson join us?' he asks, looking round – for me, or for a cup of tea, who knows. Anyway, he seems to know my name now. _Thanks, Mycroft, you really shouldn't have!_

In all seriousness, Sherlock answers: 'John is much too busy saving the entire world one patient at a time.'

The client tentatively tries to smile. It comes out flat.

'I have come here, Mr Holmes, to convey the importance of the signet ring, that mustn't find its way to a foolish young person', he says, shifting to try to find a comfortable seat in my chair; _good luck with that, too many broken springs until you learn how to navigate them._

Sherlock huffs tiredly. 'Yes, I've heard all that before. You are not the first to come in with such story. However, I've seen the signet ring. I can deduce by the size and surface residue who it belongs to, well placed in a secondary line of royal heritage. The reason for that person to part with the ring? A signature, as personal and trustworthy as could be, to legitimise the message it accompanied, and the messenger.' Sherlock glances my way, seeing me completely taken in by the fast deductions – and getting late for work. 'There is a theme here. A love letter. A desperate last reconnection act between two young individuals whose affections are societally reproached.' Sherlock leans back on the worn leather and crosses his legs. 'I'm not a man to read gossip magazines or follow the drivel in fan base pages, John will do that for me. But a simple research led me to the lover's identity.'

The posh man almost jumps off his chair. 'But, no, we must contain this at all costs! Please, the fewer people in the know the better. I've destroyed the message. I had to.'

'Surely your son's love is not all that disgraceful in today's modern world.'

The man pales and quietness at once. Finally he man sits quietly, broodingly. 'You have not been deceived, Mr Holmes, so I may as well confirm. Yes, the unfortunate boy is my son.'

'And you are trying to protect your reputation at the cost of your son's happiness.'

'The boy's a fool, he believes he's in love! He will be in love with someone else in no time, Mr Holmes. Someone I choose.'

'Surely it has occurred to your son that he can cut ties with you, thus minimizing the public's appetite for scandal?'

'Nonsense, my son is following in my footsteps, I've worked too hard to allow any other way.'

'Love or status, can this become any more stereotypical?' Sherlock decries, looking at me pitifully. 'Romeo and Juliet, all over again.' I smirk at that.

'I can pay you handsomely, Mr Holmes', the client finishes, getting up. He further looks at me, but adds no promises of remuneration, or expresses any words of interest, for that matter. _I bet he really wanted a cup of tea from the hired help, too bad he won't get one._

Sherlock gets up and places the rug. 'I'm much less of the mercenary John's stories may have implied. Don't get paid for my work.'

I interrupt at that: 'Yes, you do, Sherlock! I take care of your accounting and pay our bills. Gee, do you really not notice?'

He looks a bit put off. 'How about all the cases we take _pro bono?'_

'We wouldn't refuse a client on the basis of their financial situation, Sherlock. I thought you agreed.'

'I care so little, I don't pay attention which are which', he agrees.

'Mr Holmes!' The gentleman in the rundown armchair shouts imperiously, as a man used to being obeyed, feared, and getting away with a level of abuse.

Sherlock calmly walks up to the skull on the mantel, lifts the cranium from the mandible and fishes out the signet ring.

'What do you intend me to do with it, Mr Holmes?'

'Take it back, won't you. Doctor Watson may believe I'm a stranger to the mechanism of love, but I'm no fool to its effects. It can make one a better person, and the world is in need of better people.'

'I came to ask you to hide that ring where my son's lover can never find it.'

'I'm not taking _that_ case', Sherlock derides.

The rejected client cannot take any more. He storms out of 221B just as Mycroft is making his way up the steps. I vaguely wonder if the two of them coordinated appearances as they swapped old-fashioned calling cards.

I hoist my work backpack on my good shoulder.

'Don't go just yet, doctor Watson', Mycroft requests.

He really got the hang of using my name now, hasn't he? _Turns out all I had to do was ask._

'I can provide you with a lift to work, so you won't be late, John.'

I hesitate. 'I'm working at Bart's this week.'

'I know', he says, with a creepy stalker's smile.

'Of course you do.'

The older Holmes is unflappable as usual. Even if his friend just stormed out of Baker Street. I thought he wanted Sherlock to take this case? _Or did he want Sherlock to work on the case with him?_

Mycroft lifts his pet umbrella to study the tip. 'Sherlock, have you done your part?'

The younger brother exudes a confident smirk. 'Of course, brother mine. The young lover was easily located, and received the message to meet tonight through my network. All has been arranged so the two can start a new life elsewhere, together. Pray, do tell me, how does a young couple's happiness-ever-after is in the national interest?'

'Of Sherlock, you know I cannot disclose classified information...'

I come on closer to ask without raising my voice: 'And that idiot's son just disappears?'

'Permanent identity swap, doctor Watson. I would say your little night time adventure has influenced me in solving this puzzle.'

Sherlock winks, turning away. 'I love it when completely independent cases link together.'

I interrupt: 'No, wait. Mycroft, do you mean an impersonator is taking the son's place?'

Mycroft looks loftily around in our living room. 'It wouldn't be the first time someone get swapped in the royal family, John.'

'What?' I hiss.

Sherlock shrugs. 'Ask Mycroft to tell you all about it someday over a Christmas dinner', he advises me. 'I'm much to busy in advance of any query.'

'You just said that to annoy me, Sherlock.'

'Probably.'

'For sure.'

'It worked then?'

'Not as much as you would like.' I squint.

Mycroft demands, almost losing his temper: 'Please stop bickering!'

_Aww, good to know we still have the knack to drive the older Holmes nuts._ Still, I'm not finished.

'You got together two young souls in love because you are a softie, Sherlock. It's official, you know.'

'Just drop it, John!' he glares at me.

_Confirmation_, as far as I'm concerned. I gloat and bask in my success.

I'm chuckling as I pick up my backpack again. I need to get to work, Mycroft promised me a lift. Feels like the MI6 is driving me to work today.

_I'm starting to get a weird reputation among the gossipers. I wouldn't have it any other way._

_**.**_


	90. Chapter 90

_A/N: Short, because I'm still a bit unsure on this one. Hopefully more to come. Don't ask how I come up with these; I don't know. Keep safe. -csf_

* * *

_**1.**_

I reach over to the kettle and a grating metallic noise echoes in the kitchen. A bit like a construction site crane interbred with a an old cargo ship. Not as loud, just as misplaced in Baker Street.

The kitchen sink tap drips from time to time, the woods creak as they accommodate the temperature fluctuations as if making themselves comfortable, some of Sherlock's experiments bubble, rattle or blur, and Mrs Turner's next door tenants are noisy at time. However, there's never heavy steel construction work around.

Of course I know exactly who to blame, habit tells me that.

I glance over my shoulder at Sherlock, sitting immobile as a statue in his armchair, finding the puzzle pieces fit to place when he's staring with a piercing look stuck on me.

'What was that?' I ask. No, _I demand_ to know. I'm taking no prisoners on this one. Instinct telling me not to let go of this one instance of the usual unexpected.

With Sherlock Holmes the unexpected is often the most telling.

'What was what, John?' Crystalline eyes open wide, studying mine. Plausible deniability answers being sought out behind those familiar eyes.

He's clearly hiding something.

'That noise.'

'Ohh', he says, innocently. 'Nothing, you just need a bit of oil. I'll take care of that this evening, worry not.'

I squint. 'Ugh?'

He sighs theatrically. 'You forgot again. You're half cyborg, John. Your left shoulder and a few other bits. I help keep you oiled, usually, as it's hard for you to reach everywhere. _Oh, not that glare of panic again!_ It's okay, John. You're just dreaming. It's just a weird dream.'

I take a deep breath. Okay, _that's_ _better_. I have weird dreams all the time, especially in hot nights. Better than Afghanistan and vast sands, but I don't want to think about that either, I'll end up triggering myself.

'A weird dream', I agree, 'that's better.'

Sherlock grins. 'Works every time.'

I blink.

'How many times do you tell me I'm dreaming a cyborg dream, Sherlock?' I demand, tersely.

'Every time you panic, John', he answers calmly. I'm not feeling all that confident anymore, so I ask my oracle:

'What happened? Why am I like this?'

'You got shot in the war.'

'No, after that. I came back to London 100% human.' I'm sure of that.

Sherlock gets up, suddenly jittery. 'Does it matter? John, I think it's time for your oil. It might help you _remember_', he tempts me, opening his eyes wide. I know I'm being played here.

It really must be a dream, for it was in a dreamlike state that I suddenly found myself besides my trusted friend, we are both standing by the fireplace's mirror. My head full of questions.

Sherlock often compares his mental process is with mental cogs, turning and gaining momentum along deductions, but it's imbedded in my bicep and triceps I see the metal gears, turning and spinning, alongside electronic cables, resistors, thermistors, and all sorts of circuitry, just visible from my shoulder and all the way down to my elbow. I touched the skin on the underside of my arm; still warm and alive._ How?_ Machine and human tissues grasp together imperfect cohesion? It's something out of a sci-fi plot,_ it's not real._

I poke it, tentatively. Feels real enough.

Suddenly I notice Sherlock is waiting for my attention. He's holding up a small dropper bottle of viscous oil, something like lubricant for a sewing machine or a vintage typewriter. There is absolute empathy as he waits for me to give him a sign that I am ready. I nod, stoically accepting the evidence of my own eyes. It must be true, if unbelievable._ Sherlock says it's true and I trust my friend._

'You know the drill, John. Reach for the skull.'

I blink and obey the instructions I don't remember ever being told before. Again, the same rattling metallic noise and Sherlock just recoils slightly.

'It's not painful', I say, reading his mind.

He nods, looking relieved, then finally reaches out towards my shoulder and drips a few spots of oil.

I can't feel it. I'm slightly disappointed at that. I'm apparently part machine and that part is non-sentient. Seems like a bad trade off to me. Why can't I feel the machinery that sustains part of me?

'Your shoulder was bothering you a lot, then _something_ happened, and there was an opportunity to fix your shoulder this inventive way, John. They minimised the intervention as much as possible. I was worried, but at the and you were still John, the John I knew, my friend, and, apart from a curious tendency to forget your own new condition, you are the same.'

'How long ago did this happen?' I point to my extended arm.

Sherlock signals me to flex my arm to disperse the oil on the metal surfaces. I follow his request. The metal muscles feel stiff but work according to plan.

From a medical point of view,_ it's quite neat; if impossible._

'A couple of months now. You had a wondrous recovery, John, but are still reminded to not overexert yourself. You will remember that while you prepare me a cup of tea?'

'And _why_ did this happen?' I ignore his misdirection easily.

Sherlock's hand grasps the oil bottle with a deadly vice.

'Later, John, I'll tell you. Now is not the time.'

'You know, for a dream this is awfully detailed', I squint at my friend.

He smirks. 'You're a storyteller, won't that need to keep a logical plotline permeate your subconscious mind?'

'I guess. Sherlock—'

We're interrupted by Mrs Hudson's familiar call._ 'Boys?'_

She's coming up the stairs. I haste to roll my sleeve down to shield my arm from the prying eyes of our landlady. Don't want to shock her, at her age.

Sherlock stands princely by the mantle as Mrs Hudson comes over to us._ She's got a few metal gears of her own._ I guess it figures, she's always had at least a bad hip.

'John, dear, what is it? You look like you're seeing a ghost!'

Not a ghost, but a high quality modern sci-fi automaton with the soul essence and quick resemblance of our landlady. I'm still a bit stunned as the robotic Mrs Hudson gives me a quick but heartfelt hug.

'It's alright, John, your memories will return to you in no time. Don't fret, dear, you've got us. We're here for you.'

I nod, hazily. I really could do with that cup of tea I was making myself. Tea always makes everything better.

Am I moving mechanically out of shock or habit?

'Wait, Sherlock, do I _rust?'_ I turn sharply.

The detective seem surprised. 'Perhaps if I leave you out in the rain or if you fall on the Thames again, but you can have your tea, John.'

Good. _Everything's alright then_, I decide.

Sherlock smiles as I go for my kettle again.

_**.**_

_**TBC**_


	91. Chapter 91

_A/N: Second half. Sorry it took so long. -csf_

* * *

_**2.**_

Such as I suspected, Sherlock has been keeping records of my transformation into a cyborg. It seems I have been very compliant,_ I wonder why. _Did Sherlock threaten to burn down the living room curtains again, or was I worried about the process?

I'm sat on my armchair, studying long tables of figures that the detective compiled in a neat academic fashion. Strength improving quickly as the muscles better grasp the metal prosthetics, precision looking better too (one would think at first I couldn't reach over to a cuppa without knocking it off the table), speed and range of movement still under a lot of scrutiny – but I can almost read the admiration from the rows of impersonal numbers in Sherlock's handwriting.

Never heard of anyone like me. To go through this transformation, to survive it and, apparently, to thrive afterwards, it's as spectacular as it is unheard of.

_Quite a spectacular dream, really._

I get up, restless, to have a look at _it_ again. I'm already unbuttoning my shirt as I go over to my absent flatmate's bedroom, he's got a full length mirror on the wardrobe door. I stand on the worn floorboards and wince as I take in the familiar destruction of my shoulder scar and the new ridged landscapes of scar tissue and spongy, unfeeling skin.

Feels like a part of me is missing; a damaged part I carried with pride, no matter the weight of trauma assigned. Sherlock would insist this is a better part of me I have now, an upgraded version of my _hardware_. Trust the genius to renegade the human condition, reduce it to a logical string of equations and mathematical functions, something to study, simplified to the basic elements and stored away in neat labelled definitions and axioms. Sometimes I think the detective sees the world in black and white, pixelated, all zeros and ones. I'm quite sure Sherlock at least tries to mechanise all reality, for it gives purpose, confidence, and certainty to a world that often mistreats him. It is the sign of a vulnerability he is not willing to accept of himself, that he would rather see the world as something mechanic, automatic – predictable, reliable, infallibly following a given set of prescribed rules he wants to define in the English language.

I willingly gave away my power of attorney to Sherlock long ago. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Even if unforeseen circumstances like this present state can arise. I trust Sherlock with my life. I trust his decisions, I defer to the biggest mind of the century to know what is best for me, but most of all I absolutely believe in the amazing, generous heart that lives and beats in Sherlock's chest to know what is best for me. If my friend thought this was the best outcome, then I am sure it was.

The only thing I suspect of is my worrisome lack of a full memory. I cannot recall what happened. It is a strange effect of my transformation that my memories would become patchy, sporadic and untrustworthy. For that again I need to rely on Sherlock.

I grab a clean shirt and don it on with determination. It's only halfway through that I realise my nimble fingers are processing the task adequately, with adequate precision. Maybe I'm making too much of a small thing after all. I should really give this transformation a chance. No more aching shoulder pains, surely that's a bonus.

_**.**_

Despite my patchy memory problems I can very well remember how we spent the whole morning chasing a dangerous criminal on the back alleys and dirty railway tracks of London. Eventually he got away, gaining the advantage as he finally produced an automatic gun he seemingly had stashed away in an abandoned outhouse. We should have guessed he was leading us somewhere with a definite purpose, but drunk by the adrenaline of the chase and distracted by our impending success as we got closer and closer, we allowed the dangerous criminal to choose our path. Once he collected the gun, the game changed. The first few shots marked an inversion of course. Sherlock and I were wisely running away from the killer. Now empowered by the imbalanced power play, he aimed his gun at Sherlock. I wouldn't have that. Without enough time to act, I tried second best, to shield my friend from the shots. I was too slow.

Spooked by the attention granted by his fired gun and his success in hitting one of the two targets, the killer sprinted away, running for freedom.

It feels like I've been walking for miles in the hot, sinking sands of the desert, by the time we reach Baker Street. Sherlock's scarf wrapped over my damaged bicep is hardly enough to stench the blood letting. I try to keep my arm nestled against my chest, hidden under the torn black fabric of my jacket. Sherlock is beside me every step of the way, a towering strength that steers my uneven steps.

More people on the streets now. Thank goodness for the habits imprinted by social distancing. I can smell my own hot blood soaking Sherlock's ruined scarf. Only my friend's close proximity might disguise what is so obvious from the public audience.

I lean my head against Sherlock's collarbone as he stands and unlocks our front door. He must nudge me before I climb the few steps inside the front door.

Mrs Hudson senses disaster and rushes over from her flat, hands wet from lemony washing up liquid and hot water. I appreciate the homely feeling and sensorial memory. I'm glad I remember this, _I will never forget._

'Oh, Sherlock, he doesn't look too good!' she laments. 'What have you done?'

I'm getting confused, I think. I can't remember who or what she is talking about.

Sherlock is glancing carefully the street outside for dangerous accomplices before locking the door. Mrs Hudson is the one who rushes up to me, doing a brilliant empty chair twirling act so to have me collapse on its cushion. My head lolls straight into her damp apron. Lemon scent envelops me as I blink to keep awake.

The detective is kneeling beside me in two seconds, holding my head up, forcing me to face him, analysing me with another stuttered set of life stats he can't help but to collect anxiously.

'You need rest in order to heal, John', he finally concludes.

I fully concur.

_**.**_

It doesn't take long before somehow I've transferred onto Mrs Hudson's sofa. Fuzzily I notice Sherlock tries to hold the world together, being the responsible one. Mrs Hudson is supposed to be isolated from her dangerous tenants. There's still a virus out there, dead set in its ways to make the year 2020 near impossible to live, and beyond belief to describe by time travellers to the future.

We're placing Mrs H in danger by being in her flat. Not for the first time I wished there was a lift up to my bedroom. It's such a brilliant idea, how come we haven't installed one yet?

Sherlock keeps our kind landlady busy at the safest distance he can muster.

This distancing thing is weighing down on us all now. How much longer?

I miss Mrs Hudson's comforting lemony scent.

It's a nice sofa, but anything would feel nice at this point I imagine, and it's got an intricate crocheted doily propped on the back rest. A yarn based construction of civilised weavings in a concentric circle. I'm watching it lazily from below, and it takes me a while before I realise my head rests on a comfortable lap. In fact, Mrs H is cradling my head in her lap, softly brushing damp hair from my forehead.

It feels motherly and protective, and I can feel my guard crumbling down.

Sherlock returns with my first aid bag, that he quickly dumps on the rug in our landlady's small living room.

'How's he?'

'He was muttering just moments ago and his temperature is still rising. Sherlock, dear, are you sure you don't want a doctor?'

'We have one in the room already and he says no.'

'I see, dear, but he's also called me Mum and snitched on his sister Harry.'

Sherlock grins. 'Honest mistakes, Mrs Hudson. Now we just need John to focus long enough to tell us how to treat his gunshot wound before it infects. Luckily it just missed his machinery implants.'

I try to clear my throat, and order my thoughts. Wouldn't a bullet have ricocheted off the metal? Why didn't I think of that before?

The landlady huffs. 'Oh, give me here, dearie. I'll do it. The late Mr Hudson never complained, nor did his mates. Terrible scuffles they kept getting into with the nice police officers. Men and their toy guns, they are all the same, aren't they?'

I close my eyes. _Figures. Mrs Hudson saves the day as usual._

_**.**_

I've memorized the elaborate doily by night fall. Sherlock has spent the past hours pacing the room, sometimes muttering to himself, sometimes taking up his violin to play softly. He didn't need to ask if it was okay, he could see it in my face that I dreaded waking up from my constant dozes alone. It reminds me of darker times and makes the pain and the shock so much worse.

But now Lestrade is coming up, and we've weighed enough on our kind landlady, put her in danger by our presence in her living room, so I'm willing to peel myself from the sofa and drag myself up to 221B.

Mrs Hudson has been volunteering to cook us some meals, despite me telling her I'll be tight as rain by tomorrow. She's an absolute angel and keeps telling me to think nothing of the deep red stain I poured into her sofa.

I may be a bit feverish, because I started suspecting that doily in the back of the sofa as a cover up over other ominous, historical red stains.

I may be part machine now, but I don't have x-ray vision and I dare not mess with Mrs Hudson's sofa decor.

The wonderfully homely lemon and honey scent pouring from her kitchen almost make my resolve falter, though. _Almost_. Sherlock needs to see me back on my feet. Luckily I've got a few days off before my next shift at the hospital, even if I could have wished to spend those days in better shape.

'John. Are you sure it's not too early to get you up those flight of stairs?'

I smile softly at the figure of my best friend. I'm finally really looking at him. His dark curls are wilder and storm tossed. His grey-green eyes are trembling in the orbs. His skin is both pale and flushed. I think I really did a number on my friend.

'No need to add more metal bits to me, mate.'

Sherlock smirks and crinkles the piece of paper he was doodling on.

'If you say so, John, I'll put away the tool box.'

_Wait, did the incredible genius just admit he helped design my new cyborg state?_

_**.**_

'_Sherlock!' _I shout my mate's name in full despair as I launch myself through a burning building, nearly blinded by the revolving smoke and bright flames, grappling at the walls. _'Sherlock!' _Where is he? Why does he always set off on his own, no regard for his own safety? He cryptically said "it was the acetone in the bathtub" and dashed in a mad run inside a burning building.

I followed at once, but soon lost him in mist of billowing smoke puffs and live flickering flames.

'John...'

His voice is a near whimper, half-awake, half out of it. He coughs through a painfully scratchy throat. I use that desperate sound to guide me towards my friend through a thick haze of lead grey smoke. I hardly notice I'm coughing too.

'Look out!'

An ominous cracking would sound alerts me to a breaking ceiling beam. I launch myself forward, over the prone form of my collapsed friend, my mechanic arm blocking the thick beam from hitting us. I'm left gasping for air, leaning over Sherlock, who looks absolutely shocked as he takes in his friend bracing up a heavy scorched wooden beam over us.

_I'm a bit proud I can still surprise Sherlock like this._

I learnt a lesson from my last misadventure with a stray bullet. I can use my dual nature to our advantage. Like a superhero with a secret power.

The beam is a bit heavy, though. I can't feel it contacting my cyber arm parts, but I'm weighed down on perfectly human and exhausted muscles by it. I'm glad Sherlock is already scrambling out from underneath me. Just a touch longer, keep steady...

I gasp as I feel the pain from the mistake I made.

_Metals are great heat conductors. Oh crap. Hot, hot, hot!_

Sherlock's eyes narrow as soon as he's up. He uses the billowing tail of his coat to protect his hands as he shoves away the heavy beam.

He helps me out of our burning hell.

This time the unfortunate criminal is lost to his own trap, reminding us of our own narrow escape.

_**.**_

'John, you will never do that again!' Sherlock shouts at me.

He has been unreasonably panicking for the last four hours, pacing aimlessly and shouting to the distance between us. I feel a migraine setting in.

'Do what? Save your life? I don't think I can promise you that, Sherlock. Ever', I say, firmly.

I'm alright now. We are back at Baker Street; our refuge, our home. All is well that ends well, they say.

He stops his nervous pacing, and looks me straight in the eye to whisper, in an emotionally charged moment, so uncharacteristic of him: 'I will not nearly lose you again.'

I sense more to his words than he may gave been willing to let on.

_This is about my required transformation._

'What happened?' I ask, in the same introspective tone of voice he employed. 'How did I become like this?'

'Just some minor improvements, John.'

I squint. 'Did my shoulder bother you that much?'

He sucks his lips, and presses them to a thin, disappearing line.

'Sherlock, what else did I have messed with?'

He twirls away in his billowing coat, and states, suddenly studying attentively the skull on the mantel.

'Some knowledge upgrade, John, along with processing capacity. It came in handy and I appreciated the opportunity to deal with you in a more equal basis. It really defeats the purpose when I try to keep it a secret. Unfortunately the new brilliant synapses seem to overcome some medium term memory areas, but rest assure I'm working on a software upgrade as we speak and—'

_I really still hope this is a dream. A very disturbing, realistic dream, featuring my mad scientist friend._

'No', I step back. Doubt, fear and a hint of terror coursing through my veins. 'No, Sherlock, _you wouldn't.'_

He smiles, lopsided. 'For you alone, John, I would, of course I would.'

'No!' I shout, as if the force in my voice could make the case for me.

He rolls his eyes. 'Oh, not the reveal again. How many times have we been through this, and then you forget all over again?'

I shake my head shivering slightly, feeling dizzy from the spinning thoughts going through my mind, through whatever essentially mine areas still left untainted in me.

_My soul remains intact._

'Just drop it, John', he advises, coldly. There is heart breaking silence after that. It fills the distance over the rug, between us, taking over the space.

Then I hear it once more, a faint but unmistakable sound of a ticking clock; or a bomb counting down the time to detonation.

'Sherlock', I understand.

He wouldn't have been so daredevil with his best mate unless he had tested his experiment and the only test subject it truly trusted for his ingenuous powers of construction.

'Show me', I whisper.

He hesitates only for a second, suspending my doubt in a pure, crystalline, still moment in time. Then, slowly, he unbuttons his shirt to reveal his pale chest and alabaster skin, where I finally can see buried in his skin, the source of that unrelenting ticking clock sound that followed me around for days. My friend, in his aspiration to become all things logical and machinelike, has upgraded his beating heart to a wondrous artificial organ, devoid of human qualities.

I reach forward, mesmerised, and try to touch him—

'_**John!'**_

I lurch out of bed with a huge start, Sherlock's voice linking the two worlds I cohabited for an instant. I was sleeping, dreaming weird machinations that only a feverish mind could put together one second, and the next my flatmate was worriedly trying to raise me back to consciousness.

Grabbing a tight hold of his own I shake him the blink away the last remnants of my dream turned nightmare and try to make sense of my dusky bedroom, my sweat drenched bedsheets, and the glass of water and paracetamol I left on my bed stand.

'John', he whispers as if he understood my turmoil. Perhaps it does, from an outside point of view. 'You're alright now.'

I chuckle, scratching my arm from awkwardness, until I freeze and roll up my sleeve to analyse the live, warm, unblemished skin underneath the t-shirt sleeve. Sherlock follows my gaze with mild amusement.

'Yes, we're alight, Sherlock.' I pat him affectionately and volunteer: 'Wait until I tell you about the weird dream I had.'

He kindly helps me up.

'Sure, John. I could use a break, I'm running out of ideas to experiment on anyway.'

'Don't you even dare', I warn.

He looks absolutely confused.

_**.**_


	92. Chapter 92

_A/N: A bit of Mike Stamford here. One piece only. -csf_

* * *

_**.**_

'Hey, Watson, did that new janitor find you?'

Oh, it's Mike Stamford. We've been seeing each other more now I sometimes come to St Bart's for a shift or two. He looks nice and well rested, much unlike me at the end of two consecutive shifts, I notice.

I stop myself from rubbing my face in the last possible second, and quickly discard my disposable gloves.

'Who's that?' My gloves snap in turn as the latex is stretched away.

'He was asking about you earlier... You know – ginger hair, he's got a bit of a limp, a squint and a hump, the poor sod, but he won't let us have a look. Says he was born that way, as if he had chosen it himself. Anyway, it's not about any of that, he wanted to talk to you about a patient of yours. Apparently he saw your patient arriving earlier when he was at the door.'

_That's a new one, to be fair, but—_

'There are confidentiality rules forbidding me talking to janitors about my patients, or anyone else for that matter.'

Mike chuckles. 'Maybe the sod dreams of studying at night to become a doctor. With the day job it would take him some thirty years...?'

I drop my bag and face Mike straight on. 'Come on, don't put him down. He probably knows as much as you do, if you think about it.'

'Probably', Mike backs down with the same easy ways he has always had. I should be thankful for that, as it was this that made him get two words with a difficult, eccentric genius like Sherlock, and later introduce me to the amazing man. The rest is an ongoing epic tale of friendship that sucks me into Sherlock's whimsical and warped world every time I leave my normal work at the NHS.

'I'll keep an eye out for the new janitor. He probably has false pretext, and what he really wants is for me to get Sherlock's autograph.'

'You really think that?' Mike is pensive while he ponders me, for some reason.

'Don't worry. I'm the one who always does Sherlock Holmes's autographs anyway.'

.

'You're late, is everything alright?' I ask as Sherlock, the man himself, bigger than the world, comes pick me up from Bart's at the end of the double shift, in Mrs Hudson's generously lended luxury car. I keep saying I can take the Underground, but this is a habit Sherlock wants to keep from the height of the London lockdown days, at least after my longest shifts. Either because he fears me sleepwalking while standing and ending up lost on my way home, or because it reaches the limit of his solitude's endurance and he misses me. _Nah_, this is Sherlock, the man who dissects pig eyes for fun, he always finds himself a way to be entertained while I'm gone.

'I'm not late', he decries. _He's in a stroppy mood, then._ 'You're early, John.'

'It's my finish time.'

'Exactly. You never leave on time. You know I enjoy your predictability, John. Must you be so inconsiderably inconsistent?'

I chuckle, knowing better than to take him seriously. Sherlock's expression softens considerably, dropping a certain edge of agitation within.

'Come, I'll take you home, John. I may need you for a case tomorrow.'

Feeling my aching muscles I disguise a yawn and a stretch. 'You about a case next week?'

'A week is any randomly selected set of seven consecutive days, John. I'll choose for you when "next week" starts.'

_Right, the arrogant sod._

'Do I get some sleep first?' I challenge, opening the passenger's side car door.

'Obviously, my dear doctor, you are of no use to me in your current state', Sherlock declares seriously, before getting behind the wheel.

'Ta.' I graciously give away any but the autonomic decisions for the rest of the ride, falling asleep in the comfy seats of Mrs Hudson's car, much to my friend's dismay.

.

'How's our genius child, John?' Mike asks me as we trade a few words by the nurse's station. As a lecturer, Mike has got to put some hours into real medicine every year. I'm not strictly supervising him, but I'm keeping an eye on Mike regardless. It can be daunting to return to the organised chaos of the A&E. All fast track responses and quick diagnosis, it's miles away from the classroom's classical study of anatomy tomes and historical breakthrough diagnosis.

'Sherlock is doing alright. Things have mostly returned to normal, except Sherlock still mysteriously refuses to allow clients into 221B. He rather meet them anywhere else, even at an abandoned quarry or some dark deserted woods... He can be a bit blasé about his safety, I guess with overexposure to crime and gore he has become more desensitized than the average person.'

'He's lucky to have you, John.'

'I'm not his keeper. I just hope he's winding me up most times. And a British Browning can sort a few jams too.'

'Don't play yourself down, we have a good idea that you take good care of Sherlock.'

'Who's _we?_ Nah, I don't. More like the other way round, really. He's quite fascinating, and the way he— Sorry, am I in your way?' I interrupt myself to ask a hunched over uniformed man with a broom doing a poor job of sweeping the floor.

The man has stealthily moved closer and closer to us. Now he shies away, I don't even get to see his face.

Mike looks bemused too.

He grumbles rudely, as if my concern annoyed him more than me being in the way, and moves on without acknowledging me further.

'Oi, mate, this is that doctor you wanted to see', Mike calls him back.

'Busy now', he hisses audibly, and waves a broom like a pantomime's prop.

'It's alright', I wave Mike to stand down. 'He knows who I am now. Don't think I can do much about that back and shoulder hump, though. Didn't see the squint.'

'You still think the man is a medicine enthusiast?'

I shrug. 'We all need a hobby. And the two of us know someone with a far more questionable hobby. By the way, Sherlock sends his thanks for the liver samples, he's pickling them.'

Mike's smile is as easy-going as ever.

'Next time don't let me know, John!'

.

This time Sherlock is already impatiently waiting for me as I leave the hospital. My haggard look a stark contrast to his pristine slick suit and artistically disarrayed curls. Still I seem to notice a slight tinge of tiredness in him, and worry a bit:

'What have you been up to? Are you overworking yourself in a new case?'

He hums, pondering me all too attentively.

'Psychological analysis would claim you are projecting your own feelings onto me, John. I assure you it's quite useless, as I can see the ingrained exhaustion in your tired, aching muscles, the contracted shoulder ligaments and the perceptible delay in reaction times that hang about your person, John. Dinner at Angelo's?'

'I thought you were cooking tonight', I retort, still a bit stunned.

'Didn't have the time.'

'How? You don't work! You've got no cases on and all you do is lounge about with your so called scientific experiments! How lazy can you be?'

He looks fleetingly hurt, and it absolutely shatters me. That's very insensitive of me, because Sherlock often takes things said to him too literally. He will believe what I say as gospel, as if he indeed trusted me so much that I was a mirror or an interpreter to his personality.

'No, sorry', I sigh and rub my eyes. 'Don't mean a word of what I just said. The work you do, Sherlock, saves lives, it couldn't be more important.'

I see him stand a bit straighter, a fresh soft touch to his features.

'Only you notice, John. I forgive you because I accept you are exhausted. Why you insist in this meaningless job on top of our Work is beyond me, though.'

'Oi. Sush it.'

_**.**_

'Did they tell you to clean the auditorium?' I ask, to the new janitor, as I walk into the lecture room and find him staring at a wide size poster of the human anatomy used in the classes. He seems intently interested in the digestive apparatus as detailed in the diagram.

Maybe Mike was right, and this man would love to learn medicine, but is possibly hindered by the cost and time taken up by the degree. I immediately feel a connexion, and hope to help this studious soul to understand what he has not been taught but wishes to learn.

'I can help you with that, you know?'

He freezes on the spot, his back muscles visibly tensing, lower than his strange deformity, yet he does not turn around. Perhaps he's shy, or afraid I will tell him off for being loitering during his working hours, wandering into a lecture room.

'Yes', he says at last, with an accent as uncommon as his appearance. 'Yes, I would like that. Your patient, the patient rushed by you to the emergency room two days ago, he had been stabbed. Clean wound, from a small kitchen knife, serrated, in an upwards thrust, clean exit. By all accounts it should have pierced his liver, yet there was nothing on that note in his records. He suffered a mild perforation to the heart's pericardial wall. It makes no sense! The wound was clearly on the opposite side of his torso, it should have gone nowhere near. The blade was too short and the angle was not conducive to such travelling through the well-packed internal organs space. It makes absolutely no sense, John.'

I shakes my head and groan to my hand.

_Sherlock Holmes._

'Really? You need to disguise yourself now?'

I guess he does, he infiltrated a hospital, but why the extra layers of deceit when the Sherlock I know would have waltzed in looking like his every day self?

The detective rapidly turns around, as if he had forgotten he was undercover, his curiosity the cause of his unfortunate _faux pas._

'John.'

There is admittance, guilt, annoyance and unquenchable curiosity in his features.

'Yes, I have taken up a disguise as you call it, John. Not to explore a case, that I could easily ask you to tell me about. I have taken to the dullest job in the world because I wanted to keep an eye on you.'

'Did you just say,_ I was bored_?'

'Yes, in other words', he retorts mustering all the dignity he can harness.

'Then why not just ask me?' I question my friend softly.

'I understand now, John. Why you enjoy medicine so much. The mysteries, the mechanics, are very much like my puzzles. They need to fit together in order to see the whole picture. It is enticing, with the added bonus that you save lives.'

'What you do is pretty impressive as well, Sherlock. And it saves lives just as much.'

'I know, my blogger keeps telling me that... John, I have studied the human nature, made the impulses of degenerate souls writhing down to crime and gore my field of work. I have desecrated graveyards and robbed decaying corpses in order to autopsy them and learn their cause of death.'

'I hope you have cleaned the kitchen table's surface with proper disinfectant afterwards.'

He smiles.

'I have studied the human body's limits and endurance, the way the ligaments hold together until their tensile strength weakens so much that the adipose deposits liquefying come undone and reveal the longer lasting bones, shiny as pearls among the wreckage. I have practised socially unacceptable tests on nameless lost relatives of other people. Yet I can never learn as much, or be as wise, as you are when you are a doctor. John, you are unbeatable in your chosen profession, and it irks me beyond my endurance is limit.'

I giggle at that.

'Sherlock, I am your mate. Why make it a competition?' I raise a proud eyebrow as he takes in the implied suggestion.

'Tell me', he finally asks.

I nod, and come closer. 'Don't you go checking out his records to find out who he was. There are confidentiality clauses attached to my profession. I would like you to respect them. Having said that, the answer you are looking for is _Situs Inversus Totalis_. It's quite rare, some people are born with mirrored internal organs, left and right. It just so happens that when you open them up their livers turned out to be their hearts. _Dextrocardia_, the heart is on the right side of the chest. I've seen that before. You are never quite prepared for it, as there are no external indicators, but you learn to expect it once in a while. As I saw the degree of his bleeding, far too much for a liver puncture, I knew something was off. I wanted him on the operating table at once. It turns out my guess was right. That's all it was. A guess. Maybe intuition is a stretch of the word. Just a guess.'

'Your guess saved his life.'

'He doesn't need to know that. Do you understand now?'

Sherlock faces me straight on with the most blue eyes, seemingly filled with admiration and something akin to pride.

'I think I'm starting to see.'

'Mike was right, you know?'

'Yes', he answers calmly. I wonder if we're talking about the same thing, so I explain:

'Mike thought the janitor wanted to learn medicine. Turns out he wasn't far off.'

Sherlock nods at that.

'Sometimes even Mike gets things right.'

_Like getting us both together._

I look down at my wristwatch. 'Well, my time here is about done. Would you give me a ride home, please? If you're done being the janitor for today...'

'Just drop it, John. You never need to say _please_. Baker Street is not home without you.'

My turn to smile, he's already walking off ahead of me, the limp and hump and squint overproduction forgotten.

It's Sherlock that makes London home to me.

_**.**_


	93. Chapter 93

_A/N: Well, sometimes a bit of logic sequence between plots won't go amiss . -csf_

* * *

_**First.**_

I huff up those last flight of stairs to the very top of the building. The attic window is open ajar, from where ragged, dirty curtains flutter to the open air. I lean over the window sill and find my mad friend Sherlock at the end of the slanted roof, holding a sizeable mallet in his hands, whacking the head off the ornamental Edwardian stone statue that stood brooding over the street, undisturbed, for over a century.

'Sherlock, what can you possibly be doing?'

'Oh, there you are, John!' he beams at me, never lowering his weapon. 'You're late', he suddenly reproaches in theatrical disdain. 'I'm collecting—' he drops the mallet by the stone fragments of his destruction work '—a hidden clue to a lost treasure, put here by the mason who crafted this... _whoever-he-was_.'

I blink. 'That's solid stone! Solid! How did the mason insert a copper tubing holding a parchment with the vital clue inside solid stone?'

Sherlock grins. _It means I'm being clever, according to his standards._

'Clearly by suspension of disbelief?'

'What? No! That's not— It doesn't work like that! Science does not allow for _that'_, I point angrily, 'in _there!_'

'Obviously he chiselled a tunnel to drop the message cylinder inside the granite?'

'I guess', I say, unsuredly. 'He was very handy, though, if the tunnel didn't damage the integrity of the statue that has lasted _until Sherlock Holmes took a personal grudge against it.'_

'I did not. I am indifferent to this decapitated statue, John.'

I sigh, and finish:

'What old hidden treasure, mate?'

_'Finally! _I knew you couldn't resist it! Come along, John, it takes two people to operate the draw bridge! I'll explain it all on the way!'

.

We all know Sherlock Holmes is full of a brilliant, hard to understand, type of personal extravaganza. It's what sets him apart from the mere mortal, whom he likes to call "boring" and "idiot" at any opportunity (and he can find himself plenty of opportunities). His genius can be as unpolished and raw as his brutal honesty and killer critiques. But if you look beyond the surface, the flash and bang of a public figure larger than life, and notice his actions, his choices, where his true kind heart shines through, you will then catch a glimpse of the truly great Sherlock Holmes, who the tabloids and even the Yard never really get to know.

I can tell you Sherlock's heart is as big as they come. He's just a bit wary of admitting to it, exposing his vulnerability like that, too tarnished by bad people who, throughout his life, took advantage of him when he let his guard down. I sympathise with his need to keep a part of his gifts hidden away in his comfort zone. But I often think it a shameful waste.

So I try to incentivise him to try out new things.

I'm proud that that is exactly what the detective is now trying. I softly walk across the flat towards his bedroom, where I know I will find him packing. Just a small carry on would usually suffice, but this is Sherlock, so obviously he needs three full suitcases. Always needs to look his best, my friend does. It gives him an aura of inaccessibility he basks on.

He is checking out a small corner office in a periphery town's University campus. You will forgive me if I keep which specific setting a secret for now. Although the University counts on my friends name to attract publicity, the secret services would actually rather prefer if the news did not spread quite as fast as wildfire. Surely they did not account for the students and staff. Not much luck there then.

I don't think my friend is fully convinced yet, of his plans to become a _boring_ academic on the forensic field and to train young new impressionable minds to follow his footsteps along the path his beloved Science of Deduction. However, long before I came along, Sherlock must have already had an inkling that was what he wanted to do, that is to show the world they're all _idiots_ and he knows best when it comes to dead people.

He gets a narrow window chance to do that now.

I'm eager to follow, just for a while, before I must turn my attention to my own, demanding work. I'm Sherlock's training wheels, before he can ride on his own.

Those students can't possibly know how lucky they are. I mean, having professor Holmes in their lecture room, teaching them to observe and deduce? Surely it doesn't get any better than that!

I shudder to think what assignments my friend will set for his eager students. In fact, I think I'll just ask—

_**.**_

John has been overworking his active imagination again, I can tell. He paces the corridor to the kitchen, opens the fridge, and closes it without removing an item from the cold storage, he ticks on the kettle and forgets to make his tea – once he made a cuppa of boiled water, no tea bag, in this awkward frame of mind – and seems endearingly akin to a lost parent on their child's first day of school.

'Sherlock', he finally blurts out my name as a puffed exhale. I see he's gone past whatever bothersome moral restrictions he self-imposes, to be the honest, straightforward John Watson I know. How can he not see societal norms are useless constraints we all impose on ourselves? Who cares if I say Good Morning or Good Afternoon, if I wait from a green light to cross an empty road, or even if I am naked when I take out the rubbish (since taking up John as a flatmate, I haven't been called on that particular antisocial behaviour, really John will do most anything to protect my professional name, even the boring task of taking down the dissection remains in a timely fashion. Actually I could time the putrefaction of—

Best left for when John is not around.)

'Sherlock!' he calls again, quite firmly, as if I had been distracted. Preposterous, surely not. I make my work to always pay attention to the slightest detail around me.

'It's still my name, John...'

'Okay. Hmm, you know, I thought I should, hmm, warn you, your students won't go grave digging.'

I blink, stunned. John's mind is a deep pit of unpredictability. How he navigates his thought processes an indecipherable enigma of the most impenetrable type.

'Not very proactive, are they?'

'And you realise, surely, that you can't, hmm, poison them?'

Oh, I see where this is heading. John's uncertain tone is utterly endearing. Would he really expect me to do that? Sometimes it's so very hard to live up to John's expectations! I'll add mass poisoning to the new job chores, if I must.

'I promise I won't poison spare students when you are not available in the room, John.'

'No, don't mock me, and – hmm, you can't deduce them in front of their peers, especially if it is likely to reduce them to tears.'

'That is hardly fair, as it is the most frequent consequence of my deductions. Completely unplanned, I assure you, I'm not the sadist you paint me to be on your ill-concocted blog.'

He smirks, a full captain Watson smirk that sends shivers down my spine. John can be a dangerous man under those excessive layers of wool, tea, and polite smiles. Alright, I'll do as he asks. This time. He mustn't get used to it.

'I'm getting to you now, am I?' he taunts, humouredly. 'Good, you'll remember, that way. Sherlock, you have incredible gifts, and teaching them to the world is the least you can do. The world needs to learn from you. But be patient. You've perfected your skills for years, these students are barely starting.'

'Don't remind me of their sheer incompetence, John. I barely tolerate you, and you are not an idiot, John.'

'Is that a compliment?'

'I take it back. Clearly it was precocious and ill-conceived. You _are_ an idiot, John; but that's alright, you're _my_ idiot.'

'You talk in riddles, mate', he snaps, as the common man would say "whatever".

I just smile. Behind his back.

_**.**_

Sherlock extends his lean form to plonk my backpack onto the train's overhead luggage rail, dutifully followed by his posh, fake leather carry on. I'm looking around in the carriage, checking out the other passengers, wondering if any of these eager young adults are also heading to Sherlock's university. Maybe some staff? I'm playing this parent role, as if I was trying to find my friend some new friends.

'I don't need new friends, John', he tells me, morosely.

Did he really read my mind?

'Of course you do.'

'I've got you and you are sufficient and plentiful, John.'

'Flattery will get you nowhere, mate. You need more friends.'

'Don't be silly.'

Why is Sherlock so averse to meeting new people, making fresh friendships? It really is a mystery to me why the stoic detective keeps so tight inside his shell. His façade is hard as nails, but on the inside he's as vulnerable as anyone else.

Then it hits me. 'Sherlock, did you ask me to come along so I could be there as your assistant?'

He blinks, as if the thought was foreign and new to him. I feel more reassured.

'Naturally not, John', he states. 'You'll be there as my best pupil. The teacher's pet. Isn't it obvious?'

I groan inwardly.

'I need a spy, John', he tells me upfront, in sudden earnest.

'I denied Mycroft's offer.'

'Yes, and that is why you do nicely', he says in his own Sherlock-logic, smiling.

'Hmm?'

'Do you really believe my brother won't place his own spies in there?'

I sigh, my patience tried.

'He probably just wants to live up to your expectations, ever thought of that?'

'Nonsense, he's the clever one.'

_No, Sherlock, that is absolutely not the case._

_**.**_

_**TBC **_


	94. Chapter 94

_A/N: Due to the rising case numbers of the Virus, universities are caught between going fully online and trying to limit the number of attendance lectures. I don't really know where that leaves this story, but with tooth ache I am trying to distract myself whilst not being entirely focused. -csf_

* * *

_**Second.**_

Fresher's week ending and the first lectures are expected on campus. Among the most popular are Ms Chandler's Applied Calculus and Sherlock's Forensic Deductions. The first because apparently Ms Chandler is an elegant young professional prone to wardrobe malfunctions that are mildly embarrassing and mostly amusing, and no one understands Calculus anyway. The latter because of my mysterious friend who has become a legend in himself among London and beyond.

Expectations are quite bubbling for my friend's first appearance as masses of students make their way to one of the main auditoriums. Its capacity stretched thin in these social distancing times. Rows and rows of students sitting down to face the vast podium where the spotlights frame Sherlock's unruly jet black curls, and bring out the hint of opalescence in his pale, well cared skin. Sherlock busies himself with stacks of useless papers on the main desk as the hubbub grows in the room. I could worry about my shy, socially challenged friend, but that would be ignoring that Sherlock is as high functioning as he easily states. I'm not entirely convinced about the sociopath streak, but the detective can be very high functioning in anything he puts his mind to.

The lecturer raises a quick glance at the forming audience and immediately glances my way, as if finding in me some security blanket, I can tell he looks absolutely spooked.

Nothing to worry about, it's just like explaining your deductions at the Yard or a crime scene, I try to convey in a pacifying look back. I further glance at the swarming students, and then too I stop bewildered.

Quite a few are cosplaying Sherlock Holmes. _What in the world—?_

More blue scarves on this lecture hall than on the Everton football match stands.

I guess we can call these students Fans.

Good grief, some even have the same long wool coat!

This is not good. I promised Sherlock he could teach his perfected art of deduction, this is a mockery of my friend's powers and abilities. Trying to get on the teacher's good books, or do they actually think being Sherlock Holmes is about how you dress and look?

Get a haircut, will you? How can you see the crime scene with so much dishevelled hair over your eyes?

Is that a magnifying glass? Really? Where did you get it? An old theatre props store? Sherlock hardly uses his pocket lens – and pocket microscope too; big pockets – and he most definitely does not smoke tobacco from a pipe. Where did they even get that idea?

I groan and hide my face in my hand. Poor Sherlock, he won't take this well.

I take a few good deep breaths, and noticing the prolonging overwhelming anxious wait, look back up to my friend. He seemed to be waiting for me. With a stoic shrug of shoulders (perhaps he saw this coming) he once again gazes the audience with those steely grey eyes, commanding silence.

The volume in the auditorium drops in waves to an absolute silence.

Neat trick; never ceases to fascinate me.

'Professor Chandler's malfunctioning wardrobe has extended upon my class, I see. Third row, fourth seat along, I can assure you I don't investigate crime scenes without underwear as you so aptly seem to emulate, so perhaps stop doodling me in inappropriate ways?'

Sherlock once again glances at me, a deep satisfied smirk erupting in his features as we make eye contact, just for that split second he looks anchored in the acceptance and familiarity he sees in my presence by his side.

'Let's play the game', professor Holmes focuses again on the audience. I groan at once. He's got that maniacal look on him again, I don't know how he pulls it out of the hat so easily.

The one I never quite manage to stop in its tracks. Derailment of catastrophic proportions is imminent.

I clear my throat. He pays me no attention.

'You read John's blog, I imagine. Can I see a show of hands?'

Just about everyone raises a hand. I squirm on my seat, uncomfortable. I've been too candid about Sherlock in there. The picture of the man I painted in my blog is accurate enough, but perhaps not as censored as Sherlock himself would like to be.

I made Sherlock Holmes a public figure. Just as all celebrities, he's no longer seen as a full person, more of a quirky set of odd habits and easily identified traits, a boxed personality that can never encompass the full and incredible person I tried to describe throughout the years.

'Just about everyone read John's lurid prose, it figured. How about my own blog?'

Some young lady raises an eager hand and asks: 'You have a blog too?'

'Yes', Sherlock assures. 'Only it's scientific, non-speculative, accountable, independent, reason oriented and absolutely nothing like John's. Want the web address?'

'I guess' she mutters, as one would say Not Really.

'You'd find it most illuminating, much like the slow leaching through the scalp of your cheap home applied hair dye might actually be causing your right eye to twitch. Strawberry blonde is a touch juvenile after your boyfriend has swapped you for his first love, don't you think? Or the gentleman on the fifth row, five seats along, who leads a fake social media account under my name, and who today posted "I'm about to meet my hero". John can assure you I'm not a hero, never was and never wanted to be. I suppose that if told you lately your cheeks are abnormally flushed and you tried to conceal it with your girlfriend's foundation, that maybe you need to check the batteries on your carbon monoxide detector because it's probable you have a small leak building up over time. No – wait. The thin scratches on the back of your hand. You've got a kitten. Has he looked more sleepy of late? You better go get that kitten out right now.'

The bewildered students raises up tentatively from the fifth row, five seats in, and suddenly starts scrambling for the exit.

'Thank you, Sherlock!' he shouts after himself, as the auditorium door closes after him.

'That's Professor Holmes to you', Sherlock mutters, dignified.

An uproar surges from the audience, including calls for "do it again" and "John was right, it's blooming amazing".

Sherlock's expression softens somewhat at that, and again he looks over at me.

'And I didn't even poison them yet', he mutters my way, reshuffling those blank pages, ready to start again.

_**.**_

'That was very entertaining, John. I could share out loud what I normally deduce for myself and these transgressive young people seemed to actually enjoy it, as if I was some sort of cultural icon. But however much better this other side of the university life is being for me, I really regret I have taught them nearly nothing. I showed them what could be achieved, either through proper observation or persevering techniques, and now I must dissect my own deductions and find an approachable way of systematically convey how you deduce. To create a mathematical system of equations capable of leading any experienced detective to the correct deductions.'

We're sitting side by side on the campus grounds, in a nice bench under an oak tree. I'm nearly getting used to the double glances of those students taking up different course subjects that were not aware my friend was on site.

Sipping a sorry excuse for tea, I explain: 'They can learn from you, Sherlock, but they can't become mini versions of you, ready to take on the world at the police's side. You'll teach them something, but perhaps their talents lie elsewhere, ever thought of that?'

He blinks. 'Being a mentor is boring', he despises.

'So is being an idol after a while.'

Sherlock glances my way.

'I believed a mathematical approach was the correct way to go about, systematising what I do in order for them to pick it up in time for an exam or some coursework. What you ask of me... is much more difficult to execute.'

'Yeah, you need to learn from them too. And to care.'

'They are not you, John. They are boring and mediocre.'

'So am I.'

'Most definitely you are not.'

'For a genius you can be incredibly blind.'

_**.**_

Second week and the auditorium is packed. Sherlock has changed tactics and started insulting regularly his audience members, comparing them to a quiz show's audience, waiting to be entertained. The detective shooting quick-fire tirades about a projected picture of a crime scene berates every audience answer as he calls for clues of the perpetrator and modus operandi.

As I desperately try to signal Sherlock when he steps the line again and again, Sherlock just keeps rolling insulting deductions of the students that raised an arm to answer, faster and faster. He quickly insults half the class by the time the lecture is drawing to a close.

Some are too stunned to leave.

One gets up and asks Sherlock if he can teach him to be a jerk as good as him.

Professor Holmes dismisses the class at that precise point, and there is collective relief perceptible in the air as the students make their way out.

Coming over to me, as always sat on the first row, Sherlock explains:

'Apparently the university got several requests from students wanting to change to my course, so they asked me if I could gently ease some of the hopefuls away.'

'That wasn't gentle at all, Sherlock.'

'No, I was getting rid of dead weight. I want to keep only those students that can actually _think_, John. Isn't it kinder to redirect the ones who would be better at, say, home pottery lessons?'

I sigh and shake my head.

_**.**_

New nationwide virus restrictions means that plenty of students are self-isolating or would, for health concerns, rather study the course online. So Sherlock is about to have a first test run of the video conference call adapted to lessons. For that, we've come to Sherlock's corner office, a stuffy old closet space with a window as far as I recall it, that Sherlock intended to transform into a home away from home.

At least, I think that's why the stuffed vulture with spread wings overhangs the office door, looming over any trespassers. Where in the university's archives did he nick the taxidermy bird, I'm not sure, but someone should come collect it soon, along with the formaldehyde jar with the swollen brain – tropical illness, I diagnose – and the mummified hand.

'Oh, no, that's just trick or treat for Halloween, John. You like seasonal thematic holidays, I thought I'd put it there for you.

'What? No _curare_ darts, no thumb screwing torture instruments?'

'The Health and Safety team are stricter than Mrs Hudson, they confiscated most items, I'm afraid', he laments in comical sadness. 'Now...' he pulls a chair to angle it under the vulture and sets up the webcam accordingly.

'Not in the slightest dramatic, are you?' I mock.

'John, whilst home working or studying we all had to choose how to portray ourselves to our colleagues, peers, subordinates. It's quite interesting how so many folks opted for the bookshelf background. And in those, the book titles chosen, the ornaments in front of the books, and of course the most universal lack of book binding creases – the tell-tale sign of a book that actually was read.'

'I though paper handbooks helped reduce the bounce back of sound waves throughout the call, avoiding annoying echoes.'

'Perhaps. But how many people actually know that?' he ponders. 'Windows facing gardens were a close second in the media, something in London only an elite can afford. Personal mementos creeped in week by week, from a child's drawing to a toy, a clever way of making yourself look more personable. But no actual child. That's actually going too far, it can severely disrupt the call.'

'Alright, alright, you've made your point. You can tell a lot about a person from the way they choose to present themselves.'

'In the absence of other clues I'd get in close proximity, yeah. Like a sweet scent in a diabetic person with their sugar levels too high, or a druggie's pupils reaction to changing light, or even a slight limp in a former army doctor.'

I smile.

'Fine, you do your thing. I'll join in through my phone once I stop feeling too self-conscious to find some chair to sit on, in front of your books.'

'Corner wall, John. There are some medical tomes for you there, doctor, will that do?'

He bloody well knows it will do just fine, as he's the one who decorated 221B anyway.

He smirks, triumphantly.

_**.**_

_**TBC **_


End file.
